IP: Congressional Group Wants to Ban Some Net Tracking Technologies

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

> Date: Fri, 2 Feb 2001 10:56:23 -0500
> To: farber () central cis upenn edu (David Farber)
> From: Jean Armour Polly <mom () netmom com>
> Subject: Congressional Group Wants to Ban Some Net Tracking Technologies
>
>
> http://dailynews.yahoo.com/htx/nm/20010202/wr/privacy_congress_dc_2.html
>
> "A key U.S. Congressional group says it wants to pass a strong privacy 
> bill and ban some Internet tracking technologies that monitor Web users as 
> it tackles 'the civil-rights issue of the decade.'
> The four co-chairs of the increasingly prominent Congressional Privacy 
> Caucus said they did not want to override state legislation. But federal 
> privacy laws were needed to address growing public concerns about 
> electronic surveillance and especially `'bugs' that secretly track online 
> behavior, they added.
> 'Privacy is going to become the civil-rights issue of the decade,' caucus 
> co-chair Rep. Edward Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, said Thursday at a 
> news conference.
> Markey was joined by co-chairs Rep. Joe Barton, a Texas Republican; Sen. 
> Richard Shelby, an Alabama Republican; and Sen. Chris Dodd, a Connecticut 
> Democrat."
> <snip>
> "... the group will hold hearings in late February to investigate a 
> tracking technology called 'Web bugs.'
> Web bugs, also known as clear GIFs, enable advertisers to secretly track 
> the online behavior of individual Web surfers for marketing purposes. Web 
> bugs can also be encoded in e-mail messages and linked with an 
> individual's Web-surfing log.
> 'As far as I'm concerned, we ought to put in law an outright ban' on Web 
> bugs, Barton said. "
>
> --
>
> Jean Armour Polly
> http://www.netmom.com/
> "I find that the Internet is almost as big as my imagination, yet small 
> enough to fit on my lap."
> Net-mom says, "Have you labeled your site yet?" http://www.icra.org



For archives see: http://www.interesting-people.org/