The Commercial Privacy Bill of Rights will Give Internet Users Control in How their Personal Information is Collected and Used

On April 12, 2011, Senator John Kerry and Senator John McCain introduced a Commercial Privacy Bill of Rights legislation in the US Congress to establish a baseline code of conduct for how personal on line identifiable information is handled.

In a press conference on April 12, Senator Kerry used the analogy that in the same way there is no law stopping a person from picking up and collecting paper receipts and bills from a citizen garden, there is no law preventing someone to sell, store or distribute personal information collected on line.

This is a mainly a code of conduct bill and as such there are no defined criminal specific act of law violations. It does provides for civil penalties for non compliance to be  enforced by the Federal Trade Commission and by the State Attorneys General with civil penalties of up to $16,500 and a maximum total liability of $3,000,000 for any related series of violations. The bill regulates both Opt-in and Opt-out procedures.

On March 16, 2011, US Federal Trade Commission representatives testified before the Senate Commerce Committee on Privacy; Industry, on the same Opt-in subject, that “efforts to implement the "Do Not Track" system are already underway”.

We have noticed that if we search for the words “Do Not Track” in Tuesday's official Commercial Privacy Bill of Rights document, the ”Do Not Track” words are not used anymore. In the March 16, 2011 deposition, FTC representatives proposed a set of rules that tend to indicate a strong control in the use of the internet cookies and a moderate control of personal identifiable information.

In Tuesday’s Commercial Bill of Rights legislation there is a proposed "liberal" use of the Opt-out cookies use and a very strong control of other personable identifiable information.This is an indication that the bill has matured and adapted to present times in these fast changing area.

About this article

Article Author: Cesar Ortiz

Cesar Ortiz is married and lives with his wife in the USA. His expertise has been in Information Security, Forensic IT and related areas. Mr. Ortiz has worked in the government, military and private scenarios for more than twenty five years. …

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bill, commercial, congress, cookies, data, eds-pick, FTC, identifiable, information, Kerry, law, legislation, legislative, McCain, opt-in, opt-out, personal, privacy, rules, security, stole,

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