Representatives of consumer and privacy advocacy groups on Tuesday will unveil recommendations they are making to Congress for new legislation that is intended to protect Internet users' privacy. Citing growing threats from the increasingly common practice of online behavioral tracking and targeting, the groups will make detailed recommendations for updated fair information practices that they believe would offer adequate consumer privacy for the 21st century.
House Energy and Commerce Communications Subcommittee Chairman Rick Boucher, D-Va., is crafting legislation that policy watchers believe will be introduced soon. "Today, electronic information from consumers is collected, compiled, sold secretly and without reasonable safeguards," the groups said in a media advisory. "Tracking people's every move online is an invasion of privacy. It's like being followed by an invisible stalker." Among those pressing Boucher and others for action include the Center for Digital Democracy, Consumer Federation of America, Consumers Union, Electronic Frontier Foundation and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.
Boucher told CongressDaily earlier this year that he envisioned language that would give Internet users greater confidence in how information collected about them online is used and would offer some consumer control over that use. "That will encourage people to engage in electronic commerce more readily," he said. Boucher and Communications Subcommittee ranking member Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., introduced legislation four years ago that would have required consumer notification and prominent privacy policies that explain what is being collected and how it could be used, sold or otherwise disclosed.
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