A broad coalition of industry groups has begun pressing Congress to reconsider the new privacy protections for motorists that were included in a $49.5 billion transportation appropriations bill which won final approval Monday night in the Senate.
The measure, in addition to funding transportation projects after June 2000, requires states to obtain the written permission of licensed drivers and registered vehicle owners before making information about them in their files available to third parties for marketing purposes.
That provision, according to the coalition, sharply conflicts with a provision of the five-year-old Drivers Privacy Protection Act (DPPA) which simply asserts that states provide drivers and vehicle owners with a way of declining to have their personal data made available to third parties.
The coalition, which includes the Direct Marketing Association, is lobbying members of Congress to strengthen the existing DPPA and make it easier for people to opt out, even though it believes that the DPPA’s opt-out provision “is completely adequate to protect a motorist’s privacy,” according to Richard A. Barton, DMA senior vice president, Congressional matters. He did not elaborate.
Barton criticized the House and Senate for adding the opt-in provision to the transit bill without public hearings on the matter or seeking comments from industries that would be affected by it. President Clinton is expected to sign the bill into law by month’s end.
Jerry Cerasale, the DMA’s senior vice president, government affairs, called the bill an “attack on commercial free speech [that] completely dismisses the effective individual privacy protections used by nearly all marketers” and as provided by the DPPA.
Both men noted that the entire issue could be rendered moot by the U.S. Supreme Court later this year when it rules on the Clinton administration’s challenge to two lower federal court decisions voiding the DPPA.
Network
