FTC Can Use Bully Pulpit to Push for Online Privacy Protections
The bully pulpit is among the means that the FTC has to help make additional online privacy tools available to Internet users if industry doesn’t act on its own, FTC Chairman Jonathan Leibowitz said in an interview on C-SPAN’s The Communicators to be telecast Saturday. A recent preliminary report by the agency calling for “do not track” tools to be built into Web browsers is already influencing the industry, he said, pointing to a recent Microsoft announcement that such tools will be in the next version of its Internet Explorer Web browser. “I think what you're seeing is a very important step forward,” Leibowitz said. He said the FTC has been in talks with other technology companies, including browser makers, about introducing similar tools. “We're hoping that the advertising community will also support this."
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Export Compliance Daily combines U.S. export control news, foreign border import regulation and policy developments into a single daily information service that reliably informs its trade professional readers about important current issues affecting their operations.
If the industry doesn’t come around, “we have our bully pulpit” and will admonish companies that could have better, more consumer friendly practices, Leibowitz said. If that fails, the FTC could call for Internet privacy legislation, a prospect most in the industry want to avoid, he said. “Many of the companies who want to do the right thing … would prefer to do it voluntarily than have Congress write perhaps more prescriptive rules,” he said.
Congress will probably look into online privacy further in 2011, Leibowitz said. “Our expectation is we'll go up and do hearings next year before members of Congress in both houses,” he said. He said the issue seems to cut across party lines. Meanwhile, the Interactive Ad Bureau has done a good job lobbying members of Congress and promoting its view that new online privacy restrictions aren’t needed, he said. Based on the questions he was asked in testimony to the Senate Commerce Committee this year, “there was no doubt that folks like the IAB had done their homework and gone in to visit members,” he said.
Leibowitz said he would probably allow advertisers to put tracking cookies in his browser, to deliver more-targeted online advertising. “If someone gave me the option of not being tracked on the Internet, I probably would not take it, because I like having targeted ads, and I think most consumers do,” he said. “But people should have a choice.” The FTC will solicit comments from the industry on its privacy report and incorporate them in a final report next year, he said.
The agency has several privacy enforcement actions in the pipeline, Leibowitz said without disclosing the targets. “We had a few announcements in the last few weeks and you will see more,” he said.
Privacy policies may have to be tailored to online platforms such as wireless, Leibowitz said. “Not unlike our antitrust laws, the guidance works well across platforms, but it has to be thought of slightly differently with respect to each technology platform,” he said. For instance, websites’ privacy policies may have to look different when displayed on a PC than on a wireless device, he said. “How do you get a privacy policy onto a screen where the consumer will actually see it” before agreeing to share information with a marketer? he asked.