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… And We're Back With Tasty Tech Morsels
After a restful Independence Day vacation, Tech Daily Dose is back with some tasty morsels of tech policy for you to chew on. First, take a peek at Monday's "Issue Of The Week" on CongressDaily's TechCentral site. The article examines the challenges that FCC commissioners will face this summer and fall as they deliberate on four petitions requesting tougher rules to prevent high-speed Internet services from acting as content gatekeepers.
Meanwhile, CongressDaily's PM Edition features a preview story about Wednesday's Senate Commerce Committee hearing on privacy implications of Internet advertising, so click here later this afternoon for the goods. If you need something to whet your appetite beforehand, here is a sneak peek at some of the testimony that will be offered:
▪ The Competitive Enterprise Institute's Wayne Crews will warn lawmakers not to overreact to Internet-age privacy concerns with a one-size-fits-all bill. "Policy should recognize privacy is not a single 'thing' for government to protect; it is a relationship expressed in countless ways," he said in prepared testimony.
▪ The government can foster private sector innovation in numerous ways, Crews said, including focusing on computer criminals, not cyber-regulation. Plus, any legislative effort to regulate behavioral advertising gets complex quickly, he said. Oodles of questions arise like: If online privacy is regulated, what about offline? Should behavioral advertising be opt-in or opt-out? Who defines which advertising is behavioral?
▪ Google's Jane Horvath will offer some policy and technology recommendations, -- some that can be accomplished by the private sector and some that involve a government role (see the PM Edition piece for details). In her prepared remarks, the former Justice Department privacy chief will call for industry and government (including the FTC) to publicize what kinds of personal information are collected by companies, how such data is used, and what steps consumers can take to better protect privacy.
▪ According to Horvath, some steps that Google has taken include labeling text ads "Ads by Google" or "Sponsored Links" that are accompanied by an explanation of what they are so that users understand that they are advertisements. That kind of notice and explanation should be adopted by industry, she said. Products like Google Toolbar also let a user choose to not have data collected, and that choice persists even if all cookies are cleared and until the user chooses to have data collected, Horvath said.
▪ Facebook's Chris Kelly will tell the committee that his popular social networking service is "dedicated to developing advertising that is relevant and personal and to transparency with our users about how we use their information in the advertising context." His testimony will discuss Facebook's general approach to privacy and how these principles have been implemented in advertising provided by the company.
▪ Other witnesses: FTC Consumer Protection Bureau Director Lydia Parnes; Microsoft Associate General Counsel Mike Hintze; NebuAd CEO Robert Dykes; and the Center for Democracy and Technology's Leslie Harris.
Posted by Andrew on July 8, 2008 01:29 PM | Permalink
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