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AS THE OLD SAYING GOES: If you'eve taken an intellectually bankrupt position in a debate but want to stack it in your favor, change the definitions of commonly understood phrases.

OK, so that's not an old saying. But it is an old tactic. It's called framing the debate, and two anti-ad groups did exactly that in a complaint to the Federal Trade Commission about information used to target online marketing. What these two groups call personally identifiable information, or PII, ain't PII in any sense of the term.

In November, the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) — which I suspect is one guy — and the so-called consumer advocacy organization U.S. Public Interest Group filed a 50-page document calling on the FTC to investigate online advertising practices, claiming the ads violate consumer privacy.

The complaint also urged the FTC to ask Congress to pass legislation “requiring affirmative consent for all data used — which must be regularly updated and re-approved by users. An all-embracing opt-in should be the minimum standard.”

Not surprisingly, the piece is loaded with oh-so-ominous phrases designed to scare people into thinking eeeevil marketers are watching everything they do.

“[W]hile there might not be a physical address attached to the extensive online dossiers on individual users that marketers are actively compiling and analyzing, unique identification numbers are assigned to each visitor, which serve the same purpose: Marketers know who you are, where you've gone and what you've done online,” the complaint read.

Well, not really. For example, anytime the computer is fired up in my home, there's an equal chance that it's me, my wife, or my 3-1/2-year-old kid on the keyboard. Imagine the “dossier” marketers are compiling on us: “Brews own beer; loves cigars and the kiddie show ‘The Wiggles.’” Yep, if anybody's got a photo of Greg Wiggle and Captain Feathersword quaffing a 12-pack while smoking a couple of Cuban Punches, the Magill family is buying.

In any case, no one is stealing anyone's identity by collecting anonymous marketing data. In fact, no one is harming anyone at all. Merchants are simply trying to sell people things.

When challenged on the complaint's definition of personally identifiable information, Jeff Chester, head of the CDD, said: “When you take powerful content applications, and when you take marketing strategies through ad networks across Web sites without user consent and you're targeting them based on what you've identified [as] their psycho-social vulnerabilities and interests, that's personally identifiable information.”

Psycho-social vulnerabilities: What a great phrase. On planet Chester, people's likely wants and interests are called “psycho-social vulnerabilities.” Message to the sociology department at Booby Hatch University: Your chairman has escaped again. Please come get him.