Personal Privacy To Be Studied By Two Congressional Panels
Qualified support met the announcements by key members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives that they have formed separate committees to study the entire issue of personal privacy. Both panels, one bi-partisan, the other all Democrat, say they want to work with various business, industry, and consumer groups to develop new, comprehensive legislation to protect the privacy of personal information.
Although he called formation of the two panels “encouraging,” privacy advocate Robert Ellis Smith said he would like to see the two panels merged into one bi-partisan task force as “what has been missing in Congress is an overall approach to personal privacy. We have had targeted legislation that really doesn’t get to the heart of the privacy issue.”
The Direct Marketing Association, said Richard A. Barton, senior vice president, Congressional Matters, “hopes to work with both panels to help them in developing policies and legislation that, while seeking to protect individual personal privacy, does not negatively impact on direct marketers.”
Last Wednesday Sen. Tom Daschle (D-SD) announced the creation of a new Senate Democratic Privacy Task Force. A day later, Sen. Richard Shelby (R-AL) disclosed the creation of “a bi-partisan, bi-cameral Congressional Privacy Caucus.”
Daschle stated that current privacy laws “have not kept up with sweeping technological changes.” The Democrat task force, chaired by Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy, plans to “work with consumer and business groups and the [Clinton] Administration to determine what abuses constitute threats to privacy and decide how best to address” them, he added.
Shelby said the bi-partisan panel he co-chairs with Sen. Richard Bryan (D-NV), and Reps. Edward Markey (D-MA) and Joe Barton (R-TX), will provide a forum for the discussion of various privacy issues and “serve as legislative advocates of personal privacy.”
Industry data compilers suffered a major defeat last month when the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously upheld the Driver’s Privacy Protection Act of 1994 (DPPA) and removed the last apparent obstacle to the enforcement of a provision replacing its opt-out provision with an opt-in which could block the availability of age data and other motor vehicle identifiers currently found in state motor vehicle files.
Sen. Shelby sponsored the change, which goes into effect on June 1. The DMA is lobbying members of Congress for a hearing on the measure in hopes of getting the opt-out provision restored to the law.
