‘Take Back Your Privacy’ Campaign Begins Ahead of FTC Roundtables
The Center for Democracy & Technology launched a consumer privacy campaign Thursday aimed at motivating people to demand better privacy controls from Internet services and a consumer privacy law from Congress. The “Take Back Your Privacy” campaign uses social networking features, including a Facebook page, ready-made privacy factoid tweets, an “e- mail your representative” feature and a tool that allows people to report privacy complaints, which CDT will then forward to the FTC. The political climate is the best it’s been in years for a consumer privacy law, said CDT President Leslie Harris. Still, neither she nor Vice President Ari Schwartz necessarily believe a law will pass in 2010. More likely, an introduced bill in 2010 will lay the groundwork for a bill in the next Congress, they said.
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Privacy has made incremental progress, CDT said. The FTC has been tackling issues on a case-by-case basis and slowly moving toward a different conception of privacy, Schwartz said. Some companies are making progress as well, Harris said. Facebook’s announcement that it would eliminate regional networks and Google allowing people to access and amend their profiles are positive, Harris said. And because Facebook is so big, advocates will continue to push it to set a standard, she said. But the positives are few and far between, she said. CDT understands that content is supported by advertising, which in turn needs data, she said, and the group isn’t trying to change that basic model. It simply expects that consumers should have more control, she said.
Ideally, CDT would like to see a baseline privacy law and an empowered FTC, Harris said. Even without legislation, Congress could encourage the FTC to do more, Schwartz said, although approaching the issue on a case-by-case basis ultimately isn’t good for industry, as regulation arises from bad cases. The Internet that should exist would offer visible, highly granular privacy controls, would block unwanted traffic, would include a “do not track” list, and would give users the ability to deal with Flash cookies, erase all tracking devices or delete their data, she said.
Several big-name companies have voiced support for a privacy law, but CDT doesn’t expect to agree on everything that should be in such a law. CDT supports a limited right of private action, Schwartz said, which he expects industry would oppose. Until a bill is introduced and CDT, privacy advocates and industry have a chance to sit down and discuss it, he said, it’s hard to know where else they would disagree. There are some data breach bills in Congress now, but the consumer privacy issue appears to have been separated from data breach, he said. Instead, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D- Vt., is linking his data breach bill to cybersecurity, and leadership seems to regard cybersecurity as a higher priority, Schwartz said.
Harris said CDT’s goal for the privacy campaign isn’t to “own” it but to get it started. In addition to the already- mentioned tools, the campaign will soon add a developer privacy lab for developers to discuss and develop privacy tools. The group launched the campaign to mark the first of the FTC’s privacy roundtables, to be held Monday. The roundtables are “extremely important events,” Schwartz said, because historically whenever the FTC holds three-part roundtables, major changes to regulations result.