Senate Committee Examines Online Behavioral Advertising

The New York Times covers the recent hearing of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation on the privacy implications of online advertising.  At the hearing, Google and Microsoft advocated for an online privacy law, and the FTC opposed those efforts.  The Committee's website had billed the hearing as follows:

Individuals and businesses are becoming increasingly dependent upon the Internet for social, entertainment, research and business activities. This has created the incentive and opportunity for companies to collect, use, and disseminate data regarding online users. There is concern, however, that tracking individuals’ Internet activity and gathering information from online users violates their expectations of privacy. Individuals often are unaware what information is being collected about them, how it is being used and to whom it is disseminated. In this hearing, the Committee will consider the current state of the online advertising industry and that market’s impact on users’ privacy. Witnesses are expected to focus on the key factors driving online behavioral advertising, the methods of online behavioral advertising employed by industry, and the protections the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) should adopt to protect consumers from unwanted or unnecessary invasions of their privacy.

Majority Statements: Sen. Daniel K. Inouye Minority Statements: Sen. Ted Stevens Testimony of Witnesses: Federal Trade Commission Microsoft Corp. NebuAd Inc. Center for Democracy and Technology Google Inc. Competitive Enterprise Institute Facebook Inc.