Live From Washington: Barton Pushes For Privacy Legislation
Following a series of incidents in which direct marketers exchanged information about Representative Joe Barton (R-TX), along with his subsequent experiences with cookie technology, the congressman indicated he intends to make it tougher for direct marketers to do business.
“The average American citizen doesn’t fully understand how much data is available about them if somebody tries to take the time to find it,” Barton told a lunch crowd yesterday at the Direct Marketing Association’s Government Affairs Conference 2000 in Washington, DC. “And the reason that Congress is looking at privacy more and more is that American’s right to privacy is about non-existent, particularly on the Internet.”
He said that the current e-data capture environment is so open and affords so many opportunities and capabilities to collect personal data without consumer’s knowledge that some basic privacy ground rules need to be established through legislation.
“It’s not a guess as to whether or not we are going to establish state or federal privacy regulations,” he said. “We are going to. The question is how and when.”
Barton said he believes that the next Congress, whether Democratic or Republican, will pass a stand-alone privacy bill during the second year of the new administration.
As for his experience with cookies, he said, “If I could do one thing on the Internet, I would pass a bill that says you can’t put a cookie on my home computer unless I tell you you can. That would solve more problems than anything else that can be done.”
Barton’s push for privacy regulations heated up after discovering that a Victoria Secrets’ retail outlet in his Texas hometown where he had shopped had used his personal information to send a catalog to his infrequently used Washington, DC, mailbox.
Adding to the catalog incident, Barton’s computer screen name was pirated and over 1,000 solicitations were sent out “just like that,” he said. And, after he played a few hands of poker in a free America Online poker room, casinos all over the world began sending him promotions.
