The Senate Commerce Committee has a hearing scheduled on Thursday to hear from ISPs about their plans for implementing behavioral advertising. CDT has been in discussions with many of these companies and believe that some have begun to make a commitment to getting policies and practices right and push others in the online industries to do the same, as they make decisions whether or not to go forward with behavioral targeting plans. Decoding congressional testimony is something of an art form; here’s what we’ll be listening for: words and phrases like “meaningful and affirmative consent,” “transparency,” and “user control.” If you check the box next to each of those you’ll know that things are on the right track, which will be a welcome change from the rhetoric we heard from the CEO of NebuAd during the last Senate hearing on behavioral advertising.

Obviously, the right words do not necessarily equal good practices; there is still hard work to be done to put these concepts into practice in the real work-a-day world.

CDT continues to believe that comprehensive privacy legislation would help to ensure that the privacy rules are rigorous for all and level across the marketplace. We believe that it is in the interest of every company in the Internet space to make sure that this legislation is part of the solution. We look forward to working with any company that is interested in getting to the right balance of legislation, self-regulation and technological solutions.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 22nd, 2008 at 9:02 am and is filed under CDT, Consumer Privacy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.