Internet Privacy: The Views of the FTC, the FCC, and NTIA

House Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade Subcommittee Chairman Mary Bono Mack (R-CA) and Communications and Technology Subcommittee Greg Walden (R-OR) announced plans for a joint hearing of their panels, the first in a series of hearings in the coming months to examine how information is collected, protected, and utilized in an increasingly interconnected online ecosystem.

The first hearing, scheduled for Thursday, July 14, will feature testimony from federal regulators called to report on existing federal laws and practices to protect online consumer privacy. The hearing will provide an overview of the existing privacy framework in federal law and help identify key issues for discussion moving forward. Topics for this and future hearings include consumer knowledge of online data collection and opportunities to control what information is obtained and maintained; aggregation and anonymization of individually identifiable information; the role of data collection to improve the online user experience and provide free online content; and the ability to mitigate unwanted marketing and other targeted outreach or rejection of services based on an individual’s online profile.