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Ten consumer and privacy groups are urging Congress to
limit the way online information can be used for advertising and
profiling.
A coalition of ten consumer and privacy groups on Tuesday urged Congress to draft new legislation
to preserve consumer privacy online by limiting behavioral advertising
and establishing new ground rules for information collection and use.
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WASHINGTON, D.C. — Privacy advocates are gearing up to push for broad electronic privacy legislation this fall, hoping to convince lawmakers that businesses’ self-regulation techniques are inadequate. The groups also say Internet companies’ efforts don’t go far enough.
"Self regulation does not work. We’ve seen it in capital markets. We’ve
seen it online," said Consumer Watchdog’s John Simpson.
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A powerful alliance of privacy and consumer groups
have likened behavioral advertising to "being followed by an invisible
stalker."
"An individual’s data belongs to them and before these companies
track you all over the internet, they need to be transparent about what
they are doing and how they intend to use that information," said John
M. Simpson, consumer advocate with Consumer Watchdog.
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The Center for Digital Democracy, Consumer Watchdog and several other advocates are hosting a conference call Sept. 1 to make recommendations about how Congress may better regulate behavioral targeting. Google, Yahoo and Microsoft all use behavioral targeting to better serve ads to Web surfers. The groups want to be heard by Congress, which is working on legislature to better protect consumer privacy online.
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In recent months, two heavily detailed, annotated versions of
confidential Google slide presentations — one dealing with competition
issues, the other with behavioral targeting — have been published by a
Santa Monica–based group called Consumer Watchdog. The annotations are
highly critical of Google and seek to rebut the search giant’s
arguments.
Blog Post
L.A. City council is wrestling with a proposal to shift the city’s 30,000 email users and other computer applications to a system provided by Google. Anytime a deal like this is under consideration, it’s worth checking the money trail. I examined records kept by the Los Angeles Ethics Commission to see who paid what to whom.
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That Google can still be surprised by privacy concerns is in itself
surprising and suggests the company ought to approach privacy more
proactively. Google would benefit from doing so because greater attention to privacy
would defang its foes.
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Three technology heavyweights are joining a coalition to fight Google’s
attempt to create what could be the world’s largest virtual library.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, the ACLU of Northern California and
the Consumer Watchdog advocacy group wrote to Google to ask the company
to "assure Americans that Google will maintain the security and freedom
that library patrons have long had: to read and learn about anything…
without worrying that someone is looking over their shoulder or could
retrace their steps".
Blog Post
Internet giant Google is seeking communications personnel to get its story out to the world and counter what it calls negative press.
According to an …
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The Author’s Guild has urged
members to go along with a lawsuit settlement that would allow Google
to digitize millions of books from libraries and make them available in
its Book Search service. A prominent literary and talent agency has urged just the opposite. Meanwhile, the Department of Justice
currently has the settlement under review for possible violations of
antitrust laws. A federal court has extended the deadline to Sept. 4
for authors and publishers to opt out of the proposed agreement. The court has been inundated with proposed changes to the settlement,
including one filed by a group of California professors who suggest the
settlement isn’t fair to academic writers. Several groups, including The Internet Archive and Consumer
Watchdog, have also raised concerns about the issue to the Justice
Department in what many consider the literary flap of the century.
