The sweeping privacy agenda announced today by Timothy J. Muris, chairman of the Federal Trade Commission is, well, not so sweeping.
Muris called for stronger FTC enforcement in a number of areas, but said he is nervous about proposing new online privacy legislation.
“The recent experience with Gramm-Leach-Bliley privacy notices should give everyone pause about whether we know enough to implement effectively broad-based legislation based on notices,” Muris said in a speech at the Privacy 2001 conference in Cleveland. “Acres of trees died to produce a blizzard of barely comprehensible privacy notices.”
He added that “the slowing of the growth of the Internet emphasizes the need to understand the cost of online privacy legislation. Although there is dispute about this issue, compliance with Internet privacy legislation will have some costs, and consumers ultimately will pay for them.”
However, Muris did propose several new enforcement actions, including amendments to the FTC’s telemarketing sales rule.
One would establish a national do-not-call list. As part of this, Muris wants to give consumers “a middle option
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