Senator Prevents Action on Online Privacy Bill

securitas writes "The NYTimes tells us Senator Trent Lott forced the Senate Commerce Committee to adjourn this morning as it was on the verge of adopting an online privacy bill requiring ISPs and commercial Web sites to get customers' permission before they could disclose important personal information. That would include financial, medical, ethnic, religious and political information along with Social Security data and sexual orientation. I urge Trent Lott's constituents to make your voices heard on this. Same goes for readers whose senators serve on the Senate Commerce Committee." Salon and EPIC have written about Hollings' bill.

Comments

Don't single out Lott

[DRO0]

Get the attention of all of the task force members.

http://rpc.senate.gov/httf/fastfacts.htm

From a Mississippi Voter

[Fizgig]

I'm a Mississippi voter (shut up), and so Trent Lott is my senator. Right after the hearings for the (then) SSSCA with Eisner et al, I wrote a letter to Sen. Lott saying how much I didn't like that bill. I figured, "Hey, he's one of the top Republicans. This bill is sponsored by a Democrat. As much as I dislike Lott, he's bound to agree with me!"

Not quite. I got a letter back three days ago. It was a bit behind the times, still referring to the SSSCA. It basically said, "Yes, there is a bill. Yes, there was testimony. It was very useful. Your opinion is important to me." Considering how reviled the CBPTA eventually became and when the letter was sent, it shouldn't exactly take a lot of political initiative to stand up against that kind of bill. But from the letter it didn't look like he exactly opposed it or anything.

I realized there are lots of problems with Hollings most recent bill, and maybe that's why he's doing that, but I wouldn't call Lott privacy- or tech-friendly by any stretch of the imagination.

Re:From a Mississippi Voter

[Silver Rose]

I got a similar letter from Ben Campell (a senator from Colorado). Standard practise in congress is to have an assistant write a form letter which says about what you got. Then they count up all the letters on the issue for/against and give the busy congressman some numbers. Not exactly an ideal solution, but then again, we pay for the people reading our letters and sending us responses. I'd rather not pay for a personalized response to every letter. As for not saying anything about a position, that's pretty standard politicking. Don't commit yourself to something if there's any potential you might change your position later. I'd be a lot angrier if I got a letter saying "I agree with you" and then he voted against what I had advocated than if he sent me something non-comittal and then voted against me.

Yesterday's News

[floppy ears]

Hello! This is yesterday's news. Today's News.com article has more up-to-date info, and it says that Lott's tactic only delayed things by one day.

Are we fer it or agin it?

[condour75]

The fact that Hollings is behind this bill should be the first clue about the real agenda it serves. Hollings is also a sponsor of the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA, formerly known as the SSSCA), a bill that requires all new computers and other digital information devices to come with copy protection software and/or hardware installed on them. It would also outlaw any effort to reverse-engineer or disable any copy-protection format -- a measure that some observers believe will cripple software development -- particularly in the open-source and free-software communities.

. . .

It is masquerading as pro-consumer when in fact it is pro-business. The new legislation is similar to laws passed in Europe that divide your personal information into two types. The first is "sensitive" information, such as your financial and medical history, race, lifestyle, religion, political affiliation, and sex life. The second is "nonsensitive" information, and among that will include your name, address, and records of anything you buy or surf on the Internet. Under the act, business can't collect or divulge the sensitive bits without your express consent, but anything classified as nonsensitive can be freely collected and sold at will.

--from Salon article

According to Salon, the purpose of the act is to condone spyware by regulating it, and thus setting a precedent for its continued use. No fan of Lott am I, but that Holling guy don't sound too great either.

Before everybody jumps on good ol' Trent ...

[thud2000]

Read the Salon article. And remember who is sponsoring this bill. There may be more to this than meets the eye.

And yes, I am a Mississippian, and a conservative, and no, I don't really like Trent Lott.

Contact info

[CleverNickName]

Contact info for the committee is here.

(Shoulda put this in my rant. Sorry.)

What is the right thing?

[Angel Hair Pasta]

Lott may have done 'the right thing' by trying to keep this bill from passing. There was another /. article not very long ago More on Internet Privacy Legislation and a link from it A law to protect spyware that shows how this bill is not all that great for our privacy.

One point that the article makes is that this bill would "place a congressional stamp of approval on precisely the kinds of practices that purveyors of spyware are eager to engage in" and "the nonsensitive clause is a huge gaping loophole through which business will ride roughshod."

Before we blast Lott for this, we should get a good idea of what the bill does based off of something other than its name (which of course was given to it by Sen. Fritz Hollings!)

I'm not saying that Lott is working for our better good, or even that he is thinking of people like us, but we should take a good look at this thing before we complain that someone kept it from passing.

AHP

Re:NYTimes Login

[sqlrob]

Now what would be -really- useful is for someone to write a PHP script that goes to the signup page, enters random information. signs you up, then logs in and goes to the page you originally wanted. Then we could just point all the links to mydomain.net/ReferToNyTimes?StoryID=x You mean something like this?

online section by section analysis

[dcgaber]

We have prepared on analysis of this bill andit is online here, much easier than reading through the 30 pages, a condensed outline version. We oppose the bill and sent a letter to Sen. Hollings yesterday saying so, we also cc: to all members of the Committee (inc. Sen. Lott). You can also read our press release from our front page here.

We do not want to see the Internet, and Internet commerce treated differently than non-internet commerce. We do not want discriminatory effects placed on the Internet, and wide ranging new regulations and sever legal penalties that will bankrupt many firms. If you conduct any business with a web site, you should oppose this bill!

Re:Good, we should be glad it is defeated.

[sketchkid]

no dude. this bill requires that consumers opt-in to allow companies to share/sell/use this consumer information online. read it again.
companies are balking at the bill b/c of the costs associated with getting consumers to opt-in (effectively selling the customer on why to opt-in)