In the face of sharp protest from Net privacy and consumer advocates, the Federal Trade Commission is defending its decision to follow Clinton administration doctrine and let industry fashion the rules for protecting data privacy.
"If industry delivers on its promise, there won't be a need for government regulation," said David Medine, associate director in the commission's Bureau of Consumer Protection, who has been overseeing online-privacy policy.
What's really at issue is how the agency's much-publicized June public workshops on data privacy are being interpreted. During four days of testimony, privacy groups argued that the government must do more to protect people from aggressive marketers and freelance bad actors who maintain personal-info databases and buy and sell information online. Industry leaders sought to preempt official action by unveiling new voluntary guidelines on handling data.
Commissioners listened and seemed to agree that some action was warranted. But on Thursday, the agency sent a report on the hearings to Senator John McCain (R-Arizona), chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, and to Representative Tom Bliley (R-Virginia), chairman of the House Commerce Committee. The gist: Industry should take the lead in developing solutions to online-privacy problems; Congress should hold off on any regulation attempts for now.
The same groups that argued for more regulation in June - led by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, the Center for Media Education, and the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse - balked at the commission's summary of the hearings and fired off their own letter to McCain. The groups said the commission ignored recent studies that have found that consumers want more, not less, government regulation when it comes to privacy issues.
"The FTC chose instead to present the views of industry lobbyists as if they were the views of American consumers," the letter said.
Nancy Ives, a spokeswoman for McCain, said Monday that McCain's staff had not yet reviewed the letter.
Medine said the FTC was following the Clinton administration's post-CDA policy on Net regulation: hands off.
"The only difference between our policy and the White House's would be that we are now looking for concrete results from industry on this issue, and we have a concrete time frame," Medine said.
The commission will revisit the issue of protecting consumers online in March, and will submit a follow-up report to Congress by next June, Medine said.
"It's obviously frustrating that the FTC would paper over this and give industry a chance to sort it out for themselves with no regard to the consumers," said Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which organized the protest letter.
Despite the FTC's wish to let industry make good on its promises, Congress could move ahead in regulating how marketers and companies can use personal information submitted by their online customers. At least one congressman who is consistently looking at how to legislate the Internet says that Congress will address online privacy in the next year.
"Congress may make some rules of the road on privacy on the Internet," Representative Rick White (R-Washington) said in a recent interview. "I don't think there's a consensus on what that should be, but we do need to look into what kind of information can be collected online."
