Financial and medical experts testified before a Congressional subcommittee hearing on a bill to create a special commission to study personal privacy. However, no experts in direct marketing were called for that first hearing.
While Reps. Asa Hutchinson (R-AR) and Jim Moran (D-Va) asked the government management, information and technology subcommittee to recommend its parent, the House Government Reform Committee endorsed passage of their Privacy Commission Act (HR-4049), several witnesses who generally endorsed the measure asked for changes that would speed up the panel’s work.
The Direct Marketing Association, according to Richard A. Barton, senior vice president Congressional Matters, is still reviewing the proposed legislation to determine its potential effects on the industry. The DMA may testify at some hearning in the future.
The 17-member panel that would be created under the Hutchinson/Moran bill would have 18 months to study the issue before filing a report with Congress recommending legislative actions that would plug loopholes, if any, in existing laws. Hutchinson and Moran, testifying at the hearing conducted by subcommittee chairman Rep. Stephen Horn (R-CA), said the commission offered “the best solution to the complex and ever-changing issue of privacy” because of its comprehensive approach, exploring all avenues of personal privacy protections.
While Dr. Paul Appelbaum, vice president, American Psychiatric Association (APA), urged the panel to look toward increasing personal medical privacy protections, Travis Plunkett, legislative director for the Consumer Federation of America, asked the panel to exclude financial privacy issues from the commission’s responsibility. Allowing the panel to study financial privacy issues, he said, “would only delay efforts to put meaningful financial privacy protections” into place via the financial Services Reform Act, which was signed into law last year.
But Fred Cate, the University of Indiana’s School of Law director of Information law and Commerce Institute, said that if the commission is indeed created it should take a “balanced approach to the issue of information sharing,” particularly by the financial services industry.
“Responsible information-sharing facilitates innovation in financial services and products and the ways in which they are provided to consumers,” he said, adding that access should not be on an opt-in basis because of the high cost of obtaining the permission of consumers.
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