Rockefeller: Little Hope for Privacy Legislation in 2012
Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., cast doubt on Congress’s efforts to pass privacy legislation in 2012. “Do-not-track does not rank very high on the scale of decisions the [Senate majority] leader has to make, and I understand that,” Rockefeller said after his committee had a hearing Thursday. “This is probably a next year thing, but when I say that I am in no way discouraged.” Lawmakers, the FTC and the White House have called for legislation to offer consumers greater choice and control over how their online data are collected and used by ad companies and third-party data brokers.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
If your job depends on informed compliance, you need International Trade Today. Delivered every business day and available any time online, only International Trade Today helps you stay current on the increasingly complex international trade regulatory environment.
Rockefeller doesn’t believe the members of the ad industry are capable of policing themselves when it comes to preventing abuse of consumer data, he told reporters. “It’s not in their self-interest. I don’t trust companies to do what is right when it runs up against their bottom lines.”
Association of National Advertisers CEO Bob Liodice touted the industry’s self-regulatory effort to offer opt-out choice to consumers via the Digital Advertising Alliance’s (DAA) Ad Choices program. “The system is operational, it works, it works well, our effectiveness is rapidly growing and we are stretching to evolve to address new challenges,” he testified. Rockefeller said the DAA’s voluntary effort contains exceptions that are “so broad they could swallow the rule.”
Mozilla Global Privacy and Policy Leader Alex Fowler said it’s “unclear whether industry self-regulation by itself is a viable way for users to understand and control data collected about them.” He said that privacy policies have not worked to inform consumers, because they either don’t understand them or don’t use the mechanisms offered by the ad industry. Many of the opt-out cookies offered to users are not persistent, can be deleted easily and are generally ambiguous, Fowler said. He advocated an approach that incorporates the principle of “privacy by design” to provide consumers with informed and reasonable choice.
Liodice warned that there would be negative effects on cybersecurity if the private sector or the government embraces a default do-not-track policy. Microsoft recently announced that the company will enable a do-not-track setting by default in the coming Internet Explorer 10 (CD June 4 p18). “If we do-not-track completely and totally stop any type of information gathering whatsoever, we will have serious problems in the way the Internet is managed,” Liodice said. “If legislation comes about, it needs to be done with great care to ensure that the data collection that currently exists for global opportunities such as cybersecurity … must be put in place, if not become more robust.”
Rockefeller called Liodice’s cybersecurity argument a “total red herring.” It “has absolutely nothing to do with this,” Rockefeller said. “Any use of [cybersecurity] as an argument against do-not-track is off the wall from my point of view.”
Ohio State University law professor Peter Swire, a privacy adviser in the Clinton White House, said lawmakers and regulators need to push the industry harder to develop privacy notices that are readable on smartphones. “There is limited real estate on the smartphone … it needs a lot more work,” he said. Liodice said that although the industry has not yet developed mobile notification technology, ANA members are “moving aggressively” to adapt and identify principles for mobile devices. “We have processes under way,” he said. “We will not rest until that will happen.”
Separately, FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz said that despite some hiccups, consumers will be provided with data privacy protections by the end of the year. Leibowitz said in a news release issued after the hearing that he supports an “easy, persistent opt-out on third party tracking that limits collection with a few exceptions, such as security. There have been hiccups along the way, but we think this process is moving forward and we will reach the finish line -- choice and control for consumers and a continuing vibrant Internet ecosystem for businesses -- by the end of the year.”