So, some of you know I finally was able to "escape" the house this past week to attend the IAPP Summit in Washington D.C. and at the same time I attended the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) 2009 Gala where the attendees where given an induction to some of the potential changes to behavioral advertising.
As you may recall in a previous blog post I discussed changes to permission rules in the U.S future in regards to behavior advertising/tracking and the mechanism/policies behind those. In that blog post I explained some of the changes that our new FTC Chairman, Jon Leibowitz, is currently reviewing/proposing in the upcoming FTC inter-working's.
Chair Leibowitz once again reviewed some of his wishes and thoughts at the CDT gala last week with us, but at the same time in another speech at the gala Rep. Rick Boucher (D-VA), Chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Communications, Technology and the Internet, indicated that he intends to create an online privacy bill that would include behavioral advertising as well as all collections of information online. The bill itself would introduce a first party opt-out requirement for sharing of data and an opt-in for affiliates and non first parties for sharing of information, including transfers and collections from third parties. “Internet users should be able to know what information is collected about them and have the opportunity to opt out”. This could hurt a number of advertising practices for some of you or even email programs depending on how you track opens/clicks and refer to websites for turnover.
No bill has been written yet, but Boucher wants to make website owners disclose how they collect and use data, and give users the option to opt out of any data collection. Now, if I recall? don't most of us do that now in self-regulation? I know many do in fact… My privacy policy states that.
It takes a lot of backing to get a bill to the President's desk and if I also recall again I haven't heard Obama's administration really making privacy a big issues on his list of things to "clean-up" in the White House. Of course, President Obama DID pick Leibowitz himself to lead the FTC who would regulate such aspects of privacy regulations and who is a long-time privacy advocate himself.
Make sure you read that post I was talking about above. Make sure you beginning to look at some of the widely accepted self-regulated practices of information sharing, processing, permissions, etc. As the post discusses, many people, business, and trade groups are working to tighten their practices so maybe they can prove to the regulators that a bill is NOT necessary.
-Dennis
Don't Just Send, Deliver!
Last 5 posts by Dennis Dayman
- Delivery and deliverability debunked - May 7th, 2012
- European Regulator Warns Silicon Valley About Privacy - April 28th, 2012
- Canada’s anti-spam law won’t take effect until 2013 - April 28th, 2012
- Mr. Dayman Goes to Washington - April 2nd, 2012
- EU proposes a reform of the data protection rules - March 28th, 2012
Just another government solution to a non-problem destined to stifle legitimate business by forcing everyone to operate at the lowest common denominator.
Chains you can believe in….