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Senate Grapples With Web Privacy Issues
Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.) said yesterday's hearing emphasized "how little we do understand" about Internet advertising and consumers' privacy.
(By Mark Wilson -- Getty Images)
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Assembled before the Senate committee were representatives of Google; Microsoft; Facebook; and NebuAd, one of the companies that provides deep packet inspection technology to Internet service providers.
All of them assured the panel that they were doing their best to protect privacy.
To pass any kind of law on the subject, Congress is expected to have to wrestle with thorny technical and philosophical questions.
If "personally identifiable information" is to be guarded by the law, what constitutes personally identifiable information? Should a person's numerical Internet address be considered private?
If people ought to be informed about data-collection practices, what format should the notice take? Web sites already issue long and convoluted terms-of-service agreements that most consumers never read.
And if a company builds a profile of a consumer, should the consumer be allowed to see what's in her file?
But even if such matters can be decided, not everyone thinks a new law covering online privacy is such a great idea.
Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) said regulation may be unwarranted because the industry is moving "quickly to try to cut these problems off before they occur." Consumers could refuse to do business with companies that do not adequately protect privacy.
"The private market has a lot of incentives," he said.
As for the online advertising principles proposed by the Federal Trade Commission, DeMint worried that even those voluntary guidelines could stifle free enterprise.
"In some ways, we've got a solution in search of a problem," he said.
Other panel members seemed certain that there may be a problem afoot on the Internet, however.
Noting that he reads his home-state newspapers online, Nelson sounded fearful of the idea that a company could be collecting information about what he reads.
And Dorgan likened the way Web sites collect information to having someone follow a shopper around at the mall, jotting down what they looked at and bought as they moved from store to store.
"I don't have the foggiest idea who's tracking it, how they're tracking it, how they might use it, whether that company has some scruples," Dorgan said later.
"Knowledge is important here."
