Sens. Kerry and McCain unveil major bill to safeguard consumers' online data

[Newsjock]

Source: Los Angeles Times

Two leading U.S. senators introduced bipartisan privacy legislation Tuesday to safeguard consumer information online, aiming to prevent the misuse of personal data while not squelching the advertising that fuels the Internet economy.

Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), who both have a history of working on technology issues, said their Commercial Privacy Bill of Rights would protect Americans' personal information as it is increasingly shared between online companies.

... (The bill) would include requiring consumers to provide clear consent -- known as opt-in -- for the collection of "sensitive, personally identifiable information." ... (It) also would require state attorneys general to back off on enforcing the legislation when the FTC steps in to take action against a violator. And Kerry and McCain would prohibit private lawsuits based on the law.

... Noticeably missing from the bill is a requirement for a do-not-track mechanism in Web browsers, similar to the do-not-call list for telemarketers, that would give consumers the ability to stop companies from tracking their online movements. Kerry and McCain said they anticipated that other senators might try to add such a requirement, but they felt the opt-in requirements on companies were sufficient to protect consumer information.

Read more: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/technology/2011/04/kerry-mccain-privacy-bill-online-tracking-targetted-adverstising.html

[bemildred]

1. "Noticeably missing from the bill is a requirement for a do-not-track mechanism in Web browsers"

Or one could even go so far as to just forbid tracking, which would not require any browser modifications.

[cui bono]

3. +1

[ixion]

2. "consumers"

Ugh.

[bemildred]

4. Yeah, that too. nt

[BlueJazz]

5. We need an "Anti-Spam" bill. Spam/Junk Email doesn't do anything but take bandwidth space from ...

...us all.