[Vision2020] Consumer Privacy; Offenders want negotiations to be private

[Art Deco]

  [image: The New York Times] <http://www.nytimes.com/>


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March 29, 2012
Conflict Over How Open ‘Do Not Track’ Talks Will Be By EDWARD
WYATT<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/w/edward_wyatt/index.html?inline=nyt-per>and
TANZINA
VEGA<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/v/tanzina_vega/index.html?inline=nyt-per>

WASHINGTON — Technology companies want to talk with the government about
protecting privacy on the Internet. They just want those talks to be
private.

Representatives of advertising companies, Internet sites and technology
companies told a House subcommittee on Thursday that they thought Internet
privacy policies, including Do Not Track options, should be created through
an “open and transparent” process, as two government agencies have
recommended.

But openness is relative. “If this process takes the form of a public
discussion, industry participants will be looking over their shoulders or
sitting on their hands instead of offering bold ideas for workable
solutions,” said Jonathan Zuck, president of the Association for
Competitive Technology, a trade association of software, hardware and
technology consulting companies.

The Commerce Department and the Federal Trade Commission, which are
encouraging companies to be more open with consumers about their privacy
policies, say that any such talks should be accessible to, if not include,
Internet users.

“We don’t think there is any substitute for openness and transparency,”
Lawrence E. Strickling, assistant secretary for communication and
information at the Commerce Department, told the subcommittee, a part of
the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

Lawyers for companies are free to talk among themselves about the best
practices in protecting consumer privacy, he said, but to give consumers
faith in the process, “the sessions we conduct will be open and
transparent.”

The hearing on consumer privacy, the fifth by the House panel, comes after
the recent release by the White House and the F.T.C. of recommendations for
how to protect personal data that individuals leave behind when they surf
the Internet.

As Internet privacy has become a bigger issue in Washington, technology
companies have been increasing their lobbying. Google and Facebook recently
bolstered their lobbying teams. Google hired Susan Molinari, a former New
York congresswoman. Facebook hired Greg Maurer, a former aide to House
Speaker John Boehner.

Both companies, along with others, are likely to be engaged in the coming
months with the trade commission, which called this week for legislation to
regulate data brokers, companies that buy and sell personal data to help
build online profiles of consumers. Technology companies fear that the
F.T.C. might be drafting a definition of data brokers that is so broad it
includes almost any company that collects user information online.

Jon Leibowitz, the F.T.C.’s chairman, also got the industry’s attention
when he said this week that if companies could not create robust Do Not
Track policies themselves, he would favor legislation requiring it.

Some members of Congress are not so sure.

“Before we do any possible harm to the Internet, we need to understand what
harm is actually being done to consumers,” Representative Mary Bono Mack, a
California Republican and subcommittee chairwoman, said at the hearing.
“Where is the public outcry for legislation? Today, I’m simply not hearing
it. I haven’t gotten a single letter from anyone back home urging me to
pass a privacy bill.”

The idea of a law requiring companies to permit consumers to forbid
tracking them online has upset several technology companies as well. When
the White House presented its privacy framework in February, an online
advertising alliance said it would support adding a Do Not Track option to
all browsers by the end of 2012.

When the trade commission released its report on Monday, however, members
of the group, the Digital Advertising Alliance, said they were surprised by
Mr. Leibowitz’s comments about Do Not Track legislation. He said the
commission took Do Not Track to mean not collecting any data from
consumers.

The advertising group, however, defines it as forbidding the serving of
targeted ads to individuals but not prohibiting the collection of data.

“That is not what was agreed to,” Linda A. Woolley, executive vice
president of the Direct Marketing Association, a member of the digital
alliance, said Thursday in an interview. She said that was like moving the
goal posts.

Some technology companies are continuing to head down the path of Do Not
Track, at a speed far more rapid than the usual pace of Congressional
legislation. On Thursday, Yahoo said that it would put a Do Not Track
option on its sites that would tell its network sites that a user did not
want to be tracked.

Users who turn on the Do Not Track option in their browsers and visit a
Yahoo Web site will not see targeted ads, the company said, but the site
will collect user data. The announcement follows similar moves by companies
that make browsers, including Mozilla, the maker of Firefox, to include a
Do Not Track mechanism in their privacy settings.

Edward Wyatt reported from Washington and Tanzina Vega from New York.


-- 
Art Deco (Wayne A. Fox)
art.deco.studios at gmail.com
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