WASHINGTON, DC — A dozen major companies, including some of the tech sector’s largest firms, issued a joint statement yesterday calling for “comprehensive harmonized federal privacy legislation” that will “provide protection for consumers from inappropriate collection and misuse of their personal information and also enable legitimate businesses to use information to promote economic and social value.”Several representatives from the coalition of companies, collectively called the Consumer Privacy Legislative Forum (CPLF), appeared before a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee yesterday as part of the CPLF’s lobbying efforts.
Nicole Wong, associate general counsel for Google, Inc. complained of an “uneven patchwork” of state consumer privacy laws with inconsistent standards that make it difficult for companies to comply and confusing for consumers.
“When you have so many laws all with the same aim but with different definitions, companies aren’t able to create protection in a uniform way,” said Wong, according to the Washington Post.
According to the CPLF statement, the group advocates the crafting of federal legislation that would “address businesses collecting personal information from consumers in a transparent manner with appropriate notice” provide consumers with “meaningful choice regarding the use and disclosure of that information,” allow consumers “reasonable access to personal information they have provided” and protect consumer information from “misuse or unauthorized access.”
The twelve companies that signed the CPLF statement are Eastman Kodak Co., eBay Inc., Eli Lilly and Co., Google, Inc., Hewitt and Associates, Hewlett-Packard Co., Intel Corp., Microsoft Corp., Oracle Corp., Procter & Gamble Co., Sun Microsystems, Inc., and Symantec Corp.
Some consumer privacy advocates, while glad to have more support from the corporate world, are also somewhat skeptical of CPLF’s motivations.
“We welcome the participation of industry in the discussion,” Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center told the Post, “but it can’t simply be an exercise in public relations.”
The CPLF’s statement is available in its entirety here: http://www.cdt.org/privacy/20060620cplstatement.pdf
