The Federal Trade commission is holding three privacy roundtable events regarding the data usages of marketing companies. The first event, held on Dec. 7, highlighted data collection practices in online and offline use, and included consumer expectations on self-regulation. The second roundtable was held in Berkely, California on Jan. 28 and it focused on the way technology affects consumer privacy, including ways that the privacy of the consumer is threatened and which privacy-enhancing means are the most appropriate to employ. The third event is scheduled to take place on March 17 in Washington, D.C., and will focus on issues regarding safeguarding health date and sensitive consumer information available in electronic form.
The roundtables are highlighting a common issue, and that FTC is concerned over the gap of information that the consumers know and what they do not know, when it comes to the privacy of their data. Many consumers do not know what entities actually have access to their sensitive personal data. Some would be shocked to know how accessible their personal information really is in the public domain.
David Vladek, director of the Bureau of Consumer Protection at the FTC remarked to the effect that no one really knows the repercussions of the availability of consumer data on the internet. The roundtables were designed to discuss strategies to make a plan to monitor and find ways to harness this data and possibly apply the FTC authority under Section 5 of the FTC Act (prohibiting unfair and deceptive practices and acts in national commerce) to the privacy policy of many companies. In this way, the FTC will determine if companies are operating within accepted ranges or if they are blatantly out of compliance with the rules of the Act.
It is difficult to tell what the new proposal will include. It might include consumer concerns, such as privacy issues and the ever present risk of identity theft. It may also include the FTC version of consumer reasonable expectations on the issue of how their data is harvested and used by other companies online. The FTC believes it is time to draft new solutions to these pending problems, and according to the commission, a "notice and choice" framework is helping improve transparency and consumer choice, but is not offering clearly stated policies that consumers can easily understand.
In a "harms-based approach," the commission looked at the activities that bring the most harm to the consumers. For example, this approach was the brain-child of the No Not Call List of a decade ago, and helped start the initiatives to protect consumer privacy on the table today. The commission realizes it needs to broaden its planned proposals, and that it will need to broaden its net to protect the privacy of all consumers.
The FTC will issue a report this June or July 2010, and is expected to propose new legislation that it now pending in Congress. This may be an amendment to the FTC Improvements ACT, which has been gathering steam in the Senate after having been passed in the House. It is a bill that will give the FTC power to seek civil penalties in Section 5 cases and create new trade regulation rules. Those rules would include the express authority to sue violators of the FTC ACT, and those who provide "substantial assistance" to people who violate the same act.
The commission is expected to initiate its authority on possibly Congressional requirements to write new trade regulation rules on privacy in a general sense, or on issues that will come up at other roundtables, including behavioral advertising. Consumers can expect the new framework to be painted with a broader brush than the rules we are now accustomed to seeing in these areas.
Source: http://www.adweek.com/aw/content_display/community/columns/other-columns/e3i9f46c57380aa314f5e6753b5b9754fa9?pn=1
