As part of her work on law and privacy, Dr. Katherine Kemp has created a delightful visual entitled, "If nutritional information were drafted like privacy policies." As you might expect, it's a graphic that looks like a nutritional label, but has no useful information whatsoever. The details are obscure, unhelpful, and subject to change.

Along with colorfully shining a light on the sorry state of data privacy regulations, Dr. Kemp's illustration is a reminder of the power of coordinated efforts and regulation. Prior to 1973, there was no law for labeling products. Now, just a few short decades later, we would refuse to buy a product without such a label, and efforts continue to be made to make these labels more clear and informative.

Just as it took effort to make us more informed about the food we eat, it will take similar (or, likely, much more) effort to empower people to become more informed on how their data is being used. It won't happen automatically. It will require large-scale coordinated efforts and government regulations. But, just as with nutritional labels, it's an achievable target that we may one day merely take for granted.