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

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.

Good, we should be glad it is defeated.

[nuggz]

Read the bill, or at least the comments WHY he shut it down.

I think that it shouldn't happen. This bill legalizes sharing of much personal information WITHOUT authorization.
It also legitimizes those constantly changing TOS that "by continuing to use the service you agree to"

This is NOT a personal privacy bill, this in an anti privacy bill.

Disagree with me if you want, but at least see what the bill and issues are BEFORE you go off half cocked complaining about this.

The Senator from Disney is sponsoring this bill, which many others have pointed out.

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