Compilation of electronic profiles of individuals based on their web browsing habits and disclosures on social networking sites – used primarily to tailor ads to specific, if anonymous, consumers – had already prompted the White House to call for overarching protections in March.
With few restrictions on who can end up holding such information for commercial reasons – let alone what litigants or law enforcement could demand – the industry has been ramping up self-regulatory efforts, such as a nascent “do not track” option on browsers that websites might or might not choose to honour.
But Apple’s forced admission last week that it had been storing records of iPhone users’ rough locations for as long as a year – by accident, it said – struck a deeper nerve in the public and among lawmakers.
Apple said it would fix its errors, which included tracking users who had opted out of mapping and other location-based services where it, Google and others hotly compete in an area poised for explosive growth.
Sen Al Franken, who heads a new privacy and technology subcommittee of the Senate judiciary committee, said he would hold a hearing on May 10 with testimony by Apple and Google, which was also claimed by researchers to have been collecting more information than widely known. Sen Jay Rockefeller, who leads the Senate commerce committee and has jurisdiction over communications carriers, also plans a hearing this month on mobile privacy.
“A lot of people don’t understand that when they use the location services on their smartphones in an ephemeral way, for maps or to find a restaurant, there is no law that says that can’t be shared with advertisers or data brokers,” said specialist Justin Brookman of the nonprofit Center for Democracy & Technology.
The Republican-controlled House is also getting into the act. Lobbyists said the issue is crossing partisan lines, with objections to invasive monitoring of children and others in a position to override conservative sentiment against regulation.
The 10-year-old congressional privacy caucus, co-chaired by Republican Rep Joe Barton, a senior member of the House commerce committee, drew blood last week when it got responses from the four biggest US wireless carriers on the data they compile. Carriers including AT&T and Verizon Wireless told the caucus they had little control over the information collected by third-party applications on smartphones.
Verizon Wireless went so far as to pledge that it will soon begin placing warning stickers on the handsets it sells, warning customers the phones can identify where they are and that the information could be combined with other data. “Be cautious when downloading, accessing or using applications and services”, the sticker admonishes.
Silicon Valley congresswoman Anna Eshoo, formerly quiet about privacy issues that could hamstring companies in her district, told the Financial Times that she wanted to help to draft a bill that would require clearer disclosure for mobile phones.
By Joseph Menn taken from http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/e0a293d6-74ed-11e0-a4b7-00144feabdc0.html#axzz1LI8z4kU3
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