While the Federal Trade Commission took note of the dialog between privacy advocates and business executives, the detailed explanation of data mining, modeling and profiling offered at Tuesday’s “The Information Marketplace: Merging and Exchanging Consumer Data” workshop proved especially enlightening for one FTC executive.
“We wanted to find out more about what companies were doing in terms of merging and exchanging data, how they were processing it and what issues that raises,” Joel Winston, acting associate director at the FTC’s division of financial practices told DIRECT Newsline.
“What was particularly useful was the information about how the business models work, and why they work. It was something we really didn’t know. It’s not something one would know without talking to the people who are out there doing it.”
Winston continued, “While there is a lot of information [flowing between entities], it is not as specific or granular as people fear, and the technology is not as advanced” as the commissioners might have initially thought.
Winston added that the dialog between privacy advocates and business people was enlightening. “I thought there was a fair amount of common ground. Most who spoke acknowledged that transparency [of data transfer and exchange processes] is important to consumers’ understanding of how their information is collected and what is happening to it.”
The goal of the workshop was purely educational, Winston said. “There was no hidden agenda. We did not put on the workshop to support any particular action. It was designed for us to keep up with the developments in this area.”
Interested parties can contribute to the workshop’s proceedings through the FTC Web site (http://www.ftc.gov) until April 13. Once the record is closed, the commission will compile all of the materials, although it has not reached a decision regarding whether it will write a summary report.
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