U.S. House Subcommittee Holds Hearing about Consumer Privacy Online
MediaPost, the Wall Street Journal and the Hill have stories about this week’s hearing about online privacy. The Journal previews the hearing, “In recent years, marketers have grown more adept at culling consumer data from an array of online and offline sources — including real-estate and motor-vehicle records, consumer surveys, credit-card data and logs of Web visitors’ online behavior — to identify the most receptive audiences for their ads,” and legislators sought to learn more about how these practices affect consumer privacy. ”The scrutiny comes as [...] Internet, advertising and media companies are pouring resources into increasingly detailed consumer research and developing more effective ad-personalization technologies.”
The Hill attended the hearing and reports on the discussion, Rep. Rick Boucher (D-Va.) “wanted to know if privacy legislation, if passed, should apply to both online and offline marketing practices. Zoe Strickland, Wal-Mart’s chief privacy officer, said yes, since most services are offered both on and off the Internet. [Chris Hoofnagle of UC Berkeley Law] agreed that a ‘broader approach’ would be useful, and suggested imposing time limits for storing personal information.”
MediaPost also attended the hearing and reports that Rep. Ed. Markey (D-Mass.) said, ”We have moved from an era of privacy keepers to privacy peepers and data mining reapers.” Also, Markey “reiterated calls for consumers to have the ability prevent companies from collecting data,” says MediaPost.
Pam Dixon of the World Privacy Forum testified that (pdf), “The merging of offline and online data is creating highly personalized, granular profiles of consumers that affect consumers’ opportunities in the marketplace and in their lives. Consumers are largely unaware of these profiles and their consequences, and they have insufficient legal rights to change things even if they did know.”
She noted, “The most important idea I would like to convey to you is that information collection and use today is already robust enough and rich enough to influence what a person’s world looks like to them. Two people going to one web site or one retail store could already be offered entirely different opportunities, services, or benefits based on their modern permanent record comprised of the previous demographic, behavioral, transactional, and associational information accrued about them. These same two people can also be subject to a denial of opportunities, services or benefits based on analysis of the same information.”
The Hill reports that Bobby Rush (D-Ill.) and Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.) have been considering “legislation that would place restrictions on how Internet and marketing firms collect consumer information,” but “a draft will most likely not be released until early next year.”
The Journal’s preview also notes the Federal Trade Commission’s interest in online privacy issues that affect consumers.
Separately, the Federal Trade Commission, which has taken a more active role in policing online privacy this year, is preparing to take a wider look at data-collection practices at a roundtable meeting in December with representatives of the ad, media and technology industries and consumer groups.
“Sometimes overzealous marketers just aren’t presenting consumers with an adequate choice and a transparency about what they are doing with information, and we think that is very problematic,” says FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz. “If the industry doesn’t step up to the plate with vigorous and consistent self-regulation, they are inviting a more regulatory approach,” he says.
For more on problems with targeted behavioral ads, see the comments Privacy Lives and nine groups submitted to the FTC privacy roundtable discussion, as well as a legislative primer and overview that the groups submitted to Congress in September and detailed recommended solutions for and informing the public and government officials of important gaps in consumer privacy protection.
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November 20th, 2009 at 7:59 pm
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