I’m an analyst. I love data, and I love the idea of being able to track every last thing done to understand people better. I think numbers make everything better. It’s why I love baseball and twitter and political polls and fantasy football and it’s why I majored in economics as an undergrad and it’s why I love the web. I also work at Clear as an analyst digging into prospect and existing customer behavior on Clear.com. I thought I should get that out of the way first, before I weigh in on the subject of the FTC recommending a “do not track” mechanism for the web.

I think a “do not track” plan is insanely shortsighted, and I think the fact that many are likening it to the “do not call” registry shows just how out of touch they truly are. I understand the need for privacy online (in fact, I advocate for it), but I don’t think that a need for privacy is mutually exclusive of a need for data and information – both can coexist quite well together.

On most every site you visit, you are served with advertisements. Whether it’s an ad for Viagra, the shocking benefits of the açaí berry, or the new Windows Phone 7, you’re peppered with ads from the moment you enter a site until the moment you leave. They come in all shapes and sizes too: interstitial ads, banners, leaderboards and text ads. Regardless of whether you’re tracked or not, you’ll be served these ads (unless you have an ad blocking program). If you’re being served these ads no matter what, why the concern about tracking?

Well, the FTC is concerned that many online companies have been negligent in their duties to protect the privacy of internet users. One of the main points of contention is that ad agencies (and other companies) track users around the web, then turn around and sell the data – without telling the user about it.

But here’s my problem: the FTC is focused on the wrong thing. They’re focused on creating ways to turn off tracking entirely, rather than regulating the industry and making sure privacy controls are in place. If all tracking is anonymous, what’s the harm in collecting (and even selling) information about users? It’s just information – just like polling data or the census.

A Do Not Call registry has the obvious advantage of stopping telemarketers from calling you unsolicited. A Do Not Track registry just stops the tracking. You’ll still see every ad, except as opposed to those ads being targeted toward you, the thirty-something social media user, or the forty-year old female who reads cooking blogs, you’ll just get the random generic ads targeted to everyone else. That sounds like a disincentive rather than an advantage to me.

Imposing rules on the internet just because information is more readily available is a copout. This law would unfairly affect internet information gatherers, where brick-and-mortar establishments remain untouched. For example: What’s to stop Starbucks from taking information about every cup of coffee you drink? Or going over to Tully’s and Seattle’s Best Coffee and sitting and watching what they order too? Nothing. In fact, it would be considered good business, as Starbucks continues to craft which drinks are the most popular to customers. The FTC would have no recourse to tell Starbucks not to engage in such practices, and would similarly have no jurisdiction to impose sanctions on an agency gathering the research themselves, deciding to sell the information they gained to Peet’s Coffee and Caffe Vita.

How about politics? We have all kinds of anonymous polling, canvases and censuses, and all of our elected officials are voted on by the public. We do this for the sake of information, and for the sake of learning more about our population. The idea is that increased information helps create educated decisions. Yet rather than give companies access to data, a Do Not Track registry takes that away.

In my mind, the FTC is unfairly punishing businesses who have done a good job of collecting data by lumping them into a group with those that use data nefariously. Imposing greater standards on privacy protection, while creating rules governing how businesses may use this data is laudable – creating a national Do Not Track registry, however, is the wrong way to go about it. If you want more restrictions on privacy, focus on privacy – don’t focus on creating an opt-out registry. That’s like trying to cure AIDS by creating a topical cream to deal with lesions. You’re missing the point.