The Web and Your Privacy
How much privacy do we have online? And are there any laws on the books to protect our privacy on the internet? Every day internet service providers are gathering information about you to better advertise to your likes. But just exactly what kind of information are they storing about you? As of now, there is no law on the books that dictates your privacy on the internet. And could those in Congress actually come up with a law that would encompass technology that literally changes on a daily basis?
“That is why Congress, at this point, is wanting to gather a lot more information, because no one knows,” said Steven A. Hetcher, a professor at Vanderbilt University Law School. “That information is incredibly valuable; it’s the new frontier of advertising.”
Beyond the data question, there are issues of how companies should tell browsers that their information is being tracked, which area of law covers this and what — if anything — proper regulation would look like.
Earlier this month, members from the House Committee on Energy and Commerce requested that 33 internet companies supply them with details on how they use information they collect about users as they surf around the web. Once the committee has the information, it can then sit down and begin down the road to some sort of legislation. The Federal Trade Commission is also working towards this common goal:
The Federal Trade Commission has made some tentative steps toward standards, including a December proposal on behavioral-advertising practices. The proposal suggested that companies provide a clear notice to consumers that lets them opt out of tracking, notify consumers if the company changes the way it uses the data and use reasonable security measures. It also sought comment on several matters.
But Lydia B. Parnes, the director of the F.T.C.’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, has said she supports industry self-regulation, saying that it isn’t yet clear that the consumer is being harmed and that regulations might be too specific to current technologies. Laws have been made on slices of the privacy pie, including data about finances or children. But complying with various pieces of legislation is difficult, companies said.
“Compliance is becoming very complex and not very clear in terms of what applies to a new and emerging business model,” said Mike Hintze, the associate general counsel at Microsoft. “From the company’s perspective of trying to comply with these laws, we thought a comprehensive federal privacy law made a lot of sense.”
Just how broad would this new legislation have to be?
“They’re raising these bigger-picture questions, and those questions are inherently intertwined not just with privacy laws, but also with contract law, computer-intrusion law, consumer-fraud law,” said Andrea M. Matwyshyn, an assistant professor of legal studies and business ethics at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
“When legislators are trying to regulate in this area, they’re always caught a little bit between a rock and a hard place,” she said. “You don’t want to adopt a technology-specific standard that’s destined to fail as technology advances faster than the law can ever hope to embody. At the same time, you need to allow adequate specificity in the law to allow companies to comply with it and allow consumers to know what their rights are.”
