Brendon Tavelli asks an interesting question - “what privacy under the new administration will look like”:

Barack Obama polled strongly on the campaign trail as the candidate most likely to advance individual privacy rights, but are the pollsters a good indicator what privacy will look like under the new administration? Here are some of our thoughts about what we may see in the next four years.

Brendon’s list includes (1) National Privacy Law; (2) Behavioral Advertising; (3) Electronic Health Records; (4) Data Breach Notification; (5) More Robust Federal Trade Commission; and (6) Location Data & Government Surveillance.

That’s an interesting list and I don’t have anything earthshattering to add to it. I do think the national privacy law is a non-starter at this point, and the private interests seem to have allayed any public concerns regarding behavioral advertising (and inoculated themselves against possible regulation by creating a commission, see ars technica here).

The other thing to think about is that while his list may represent the goals of the new administration, the legislative branch is more driven by pure public opinion, and the “significant privacy events” of recent years may figure more prominently into the calculus. I’m not sure what these are exactly, but here are a few that come to mind: (1) the TJX Data Breach; (2) the MySpace Suicide Case (aka U.S. v. Lori Drew); (3) Facebook’s beacon fiasco; and (4) Behavioral advertising.

There’s one glaring omission from this list: this election cycle saw significant privacy intrusions (or alleged privacy intrusions) in the context of the election.  I’m thinking of: (1) the hack of Palin’s email account; (2) access + disclosure of Joe the Plumber’s records; (3) access of the President Elect’s phone records; and (4) access of the passport files of candidates.

Of these, two of the alleged breaches were effected by private actors (Palin/Obama) and the other two by the government itself (Joe the Plumber/Passport Snooping). This should tell us that a privacy breach can be committed by private actors as well as public ones. What lessons will legislators draw from these events? Tough to say. Hopefully it will not be that politicians need increased privacy protections (a la the Video Privacy Protection Act).

Seriously, given the current climate, at best, in the short term, we're likely to see some legislation around specific types of information, along with some increased FTC efforts in the general privacy area.  The other wildcard is, of course, the Veep.  This is based on nothing more than a gut feel, but I could see him pushing for a general law broadly regulating online harassment.

Also:  someone mentioned employer snooping as a big issue.  Maybe increased privacy protection vis a vis employers - e.g., email, social networks?