Dec. 5 -Save the date! When is information personal? Does anonymization still matter? How is de-identified data being used and what are the benefits or risks? Please save Dec 5 for a series of panels and discussions about the “PII to Non-PII Spectrum” with leading experts at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. Program details to be announced shortly. For information please contact [email protected]
FPF was in attendance at the hearing yesterday chaired by Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R-CA), entitled, “Protecting Children’s Privacy in a Electronic World.” Members of the Subcommittee showed their overwhelming support for the FTC’s efforts to better protect children in their proposed revisions to COPPA. Rep. Bono Mack stated that FTC had hit the “sweet spot” on its rules and stressed the critical role that parents and the FTC have in “safeguarding the privacy of our children.”
In our previous blog post, we previously discussed that geolocation was added to the definition of personal information and requested the need for clarification regarding how this would affect app developers that do not collect any personal information from children. Mary Engle, the Associate Director for Advertising Practices of the Bureau of Consumer Protection at the FTC, testified that geolocation was always covered by COPPA. She further stated that including persistent identifiers under the definition of personal information was intended to close the gaps to ensure that online behavioral advertising is not conducted on children. This still leaves us with questions regarding how the FTC plans on applying some of these revisions. Morgan Reed, Executive Director of The Association for Competitive Technology, urged the Committee to consider the difference between “sharing” and “collecting.” “Our concern is that a developer adding a social networking button such as a Facebook “Like” button would automatically be held in violation of COPPA, even though no direct information about the child is shared.” Other discussion revolved around whether the protections should go beyond the FTC’s revisions to include teens or whether teens could have the option of removing information about them via an “eraser” button, positions expressed by Dr. Kathryn Montgomery, director of the Ph.D. Program of American University’s School of Communication, and Alan Simpson, VP of Policy at Common Sense Media. See witness testimonies here.
We loved this article by Robert Ellis Smith, noted privacy expert and publisher, Privacy Journal, and republish it here with his permission. Privacy Journal offers our readers a beginning rate of $65 for the next year, a 50 percent discount. The newsletter is available in hard copy by U.S. mail or pdf by email. Please place your order at [email protected]
U.S. Protections Hard to See From Abroad
The British publication Privacy Laws & Business in its September issue published a chart showing 76 nations with federal data protection laws, listing a country “if it has a national law which provides, in relation to most aspects of the operation of the private sector, a set of basic data privacy principles, to a standard at least approximating the OECD [European] Guidelines, plus some methods of legislation-based enforcement (i.e. not only self-regulation).” The U.S., since 1974 has not subscribed to this methodology for protecting personal data by law; thus it was omitted from a list that includes Moldova, Chile, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Argentina, Turkey, and Russia. Here is a rebuttal by PRIVACY JOURNAL Publisher Robert Ellis Smith: (more…)
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently revealed its proposed amendments to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Rule (COPPA). COPPA requires that operators of websites or online services notify parents and obtain their consent when collecting, using, or disclosing the personal information of children under the age of 13. FPF shares the FTC’s visions to protect children online and fully supports the Commission’s intention to revise the current rule in response to changing technologies.