CDT POLICY POST Volume 9, Number 7, March 6, 2003

A Briefing On Public Policy Issues Affecting Civil Liberties Online
from
The Center For Democracy and Technology

(1) CDT Releases Compendium of Papers On Consumer Privacy

(2) Rep. Stearns to Reintroduce Privacy Bill in House

(1) CDT Releases Compendium of Papers On Consumer Privacy

The Center for Democracy and Technology is today releasing a compendium of papers that examine key issues in the consumer privacy debate. The resource, entitled "Considering Consumer Privacy: A Resource for Policymakers and Practitioners," contains 23 papers by a balanced array of industry representatives, privacy experts and consumer advocates.

Contributors include Chris Jay Hoofnagle of EPIC on access, Pat Faley of the Direct Marketing Association on notice, and NY State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer on preemption.

The compendium comes at a key point in the privacy debate. Over the last year, the privacy landscape underwent significant change. The decline in the dot.com economy prompted a re-examination of the business models and information collection practices of online marketers. The aftermath of September 11 intensified government interest in access to and analysis of consumer data. Rather than pushing privacy aside, these developments led to a more in-depth focus on specific, practical aspects of privacy - notice, choice, access, privacy enhancing technologies, self-regulation, and the respective roles of the states and the federal government.

Congress is likely to return to the debate again this year (see below), against the backdrop of extensive activity at the state level. To inform the process with experience garnered over the last several years, CDT called for papers from experts with a variety of perspectives.

The result should offer Members of Congress, their staffs and the wider public a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of the privacy issue.

"Considering Consumer Privacy: A Resource for Policymakers and Practitioners" can be found at http://www.cdt.org/privacy/ccp/.

(2) Rep. Stearns to Reintroduce Privacy Bill in House

Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-FL) is expected, as soon as today, to reintroduce his consumer privacy bill in Congress. Based on Rep. Stearns comments last month, the bill is likely to be similar to the Consumer Privacy Protection Act that he introduced last year.

While the bill addresses several elements of privacy, including notice, choice and security, in crucial respects the bill's language limits the scope or effectiveness of the protections it addresses:

Sensitive Information - This bill makes no special provisions for financial, medical, political and racial information. Consumers have expressed major concerns about the use of this kind of information as the basis of decisions made about them by businesses.
Enforcement - The bill leaves all enforcement to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Existing privacy law has relied upon the state attorneys general and the rights of private citizens to sue as their main enforcement mechanism.
Consumer Access - Existing privacy laws and self-regulatory codes of practice generally give the consumer some kind of access to personal information held by a company. The Stearns bill as previously introduced would have taken a major step backward by not requiring a company to give consumers the opportunity to review their own information to determine its accuracy and to make appropriate corrections.

The bill also omitted crucial privacy protections, including effective use limitations, and included over-broad language to preempt state law.

Representative Stearns also said recently that the new bill would include provisions on spam and the use of social security numbers.

Proposed federal privacy legislation introduced in Congress is available at http://www.cdt.org/legislation/108th/privacy/

CDT's analysis of the Stearns bill as introduced in the last Congress is available at: http://www.cdt.org/legislation/107th/privacy/020517stearns.pdf

CDT's comparison of the Stearns bill with the Hollings (D-SC)/Stevens (R-AK) privacy bill from the 107th Congress is available at: http://www.cdt.org/legislation/107th/privacy/comparison.shtml

Detailed information about online civil liberties issues may be found at http://www.cdt.org/.

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