FTC Privacy Plan Gets Poor Reviews from Consumer Groups
The FTC’s proposed online privacy recommendations are too weak to protect consumers and they need fundamental revision, two consumer groups said in written comments Friday. Another group criticized the FTC’s failure to run a cost-benefit analysis of the proposals. The agency made its recommendations in a 122-page policy draft released Dec. 1 (WID Dec 2 p1). It proposed a framework including the addition of a permanent “Do Not Track” mechanism on browsers allowing consumers to opt out of tracking by third parties, and the creation of a privacy office at the Department of Commerce. The FTC is accepting written comments until Jan. 31 on its privacy recommendations.
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U.S. PIRG and the Center for Digital Democracy criticized the proposals as far too weak. The Commerce Department is the wrong home for a privacy office because of its “lamentable record of consumer privacy protection,” said CDD Executive Director Jeff Chester. An independent agency should lead the effort to develop privacy protections, he said. The privacy proposals are based on “weak, self-regulatory codes” that wouldn’t change the industry’s data-collection abilities, said Consumer Program Director Ed Mierzwinski of U.S. PIRG. Business would get too much say concerning voluntary practices, and they would “fail to provide the range of effective legal safeguards consumers require in the digital age,” he said.
The proposal also is poorly researched and lacks input from consumer and privacy groups, said U.S. PIRG and CDD. “Given the Department’s orientation -- to protect the interests of U.S. business interests before the needs of consumers -- it is not surprising that it did not work to ensure the creation of a record that included meaningful consumer and privacy group feedback.” The report should be “fundamentally revised,” they said.
The proposal also came under fire from the Technology Policy Institute, whose blog called it “a lot of opinion, not a lot of data.” It needs a rigorous cost-benefit analysis before the Commerce Department moves forward on it, President Thomas Lenard said in written comments. The proposal gives an overview of privacy issues, but has no information on current privacy practices or how much the FTC’s recommendations would cost, he said. The data are from 2001, Lenard said. Before wrapping up the proposal, he said the FTC should update its data, show that current privacy practices hurt consumers, estimate the costs of the privacy proposal and prove that the benefits outweigh the costs.