The White House has released a discussion draft of a bill that seeks to provide consumers with more control on how data regarding them is collected. However, advocates of consumer privacy are concerned that the bill could instead worsen the situation.
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), the government agency that is at the heart of the proposed legislation, also has concerns regarding the bill.
An FTC spokesman said that, while the agency is pleased that the U.S. government has prioritized consumer privacy, the draft bill simply fails to provide the consumers with sufficient protection for their privacy.
The White House has refused to issue comments regarding the criticism surrounding the proposed legislation, which was first announced by President Barack Obama in a speech at the FTC last month.
"In this digital age, particularly as big data innovations drive advances across our economy, more and more data about Americans is being collected and stored," stated the fact sheet for the draft. "And, even though responsible companies provide us with tools to control privacy settings and decide how our personal information is used, too many Americans still feel they have lost control over their data."
The bill, as currently written, allows industries to create their own privacy policies and codes of conduct, which the FTC would then enforce.
Democratic members of Congress blasted the bill, stating that as such, all the flawed processes of collecting, using and sharing the data of consumers would continue, and the authority of the FTC to prevent such unfair methods would be diminished.
Jeffrey Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, also issued criticisms against the proposed legislation, as it fails to provide the FTC with the authority to develop consumer privacy safeguards, and instead empowers companies to harvest data without fear of being sanctioned by regulators.
The draft bill will also be preempting state laws, some of which are even stronger than the ones included within the proposal, and will also be exempting startup companies from privacy requirements over their first 18 months of collecting data.
The draft bill did not only meet criticism but was praised by several groups related to the tech industry.
Jules Polonetsky, executive director of Future of Privacy Forum, which is supported by corporations from the data-mining and tech industries, is among those that commended the bill, stating one of the key concepts included in the proposal is the creation of Privacy Review Boards that would approve data collecting practices that would otherwise be prohibited by law.
New America's Open Technology Institute senior counsel Laura Moy revealed that many members in the privacy community were not consulted in the development of the proposal until it was too late, which made several privacy groups unable to make a review of a version of the draft much earlier.
