Watching for Internet Privacy Law Signals

Friday, November 17, 2000
By Robert MacMillan ,
Special to Washtech.com

URL: http://www.washtech.com/news/rmacmillan/5280-1.html

Date accessed: 15 January 2001

E-commerce companies and other Internet-based operations are going to face a cyberspace odyssey on the privacy front in 2001. In its next session, Congress is more likely than ever to pass online personal data protection legislation.

If you're wondering where the issue is going to surface, just listen as members, business groups and privacy advocates begin to seriously knock their heads together.

When officials from the Information Technology Industry Council released their third High-Tech Voting Guide in mid-October, they noted that privacy online is a vastly more complex issue than previously thought.

ITI President Rhett Dawson noted with a fair amount of astonishment that at a recent meeting on the subject, his overwhelming thought was that the issue was much bigger than any one piece of legislation.

Sen. Slade Gorton (R-Wash.), a member of Sen. John McCain's Commerce Committee, came to the same conclusion.

Assuming he survives his re-election bid against Democrat and former RealNetworks executive Maria Cantwell, Gorton plans to support some congressional tinkering in the privacy world. But he admitted, before the election, that he is mystified about which path to take.

Any representative or senator immersed in this particular area of policy will quickly find themselves being criticized by extremists and moderates on either end, since there is almost no completely satisfactory solid color anywhere along the privacy spectrum.

The relatively extreme pro-Internet privacy supporters, such as Sen. Richard Shelby (R-Ala.) and Reps. Edward Markey (D-Mass.) and Joe Barton (R-Texas), founders of the Privacy Caucus, have pushed hard, though relatively unsuccessfully, for "privacy legislation now."

They were the most recent critics of a plan in the Commerce-Justice-State appropriations bill that started out as a way to prevent Social Security identity theft. They claim that Sen. Judd Gregg (R-N.H.) allowed the language to be hijacked by business interests, notably the credit industry, which is trying to keep as much personal data available as possible so as not to stifle their ability to do business.

The majority of the debate is encapsulated there. It has been all year after the Gramm-Leach-Bliley financial services modernization bill's privacy protections for consumers fell notably short of what the Shelbys and Markeys of the world were seeking.

Shelby and Markey, as well as Senate Judiciary Committee ranking Democrat Patrick Leahy of Vermont, have tried to introduce varying amounts of strong privacy protection for financial and medical information, and the like, to little avail.

On the other side, Reps. Asa Hutchinson (R-Ark.) and James Moran (D-Va.) tried to pass a bill forestalling privacy legislation in favor of a commission to study the need for legislation. Even this fell apart in an abortive House vote.

Now McCain and Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Spencer Abraham (R-Mich.) are promoting legislation that tries to strike a middle ground to satisfy the likes of Gorton and his friends.

The battle trenches are quickly being dug. Technology companies trying to figure out how not to break the law (remember, the Federal Trade Commission is erring on the side of the privacy advocates for the most part) will have to tune in to these key players next year.

Reported by Washtech.com, http://www.washtech.com

Category: 48. Privacy