It may seem like a hodgepodge of disparate projects, but they're
all working toward giving consumers more control over collection of
their mobile data.
The FTC wants to bring the Children's Online Privacy Protection
Act of 1998 (COPPA) into the 21st century, which means it must
address mobile. The commission wants to label location data and
mobile-device IDs as personal information, which would require
mobile marketers to notify consumers when they're collecting and
using such data. It's expected to officially propose its COPPA
changes by the end of the year.
On Monday afternoon, industry trade-association representatives,
academics, tech experts, corporate counsels and consumer groups
will attend a four-hour meeting held by the Department of
Commerce's National Telecommunications and Information
Administration. They'll try to create a standard for mobile-app
privacy notifications. The project is part of a larger Obama
administration privacy effort.
"The level of activity around mobile privacy makes it clear that
it is important to both businesses and consumers," said John
Morris, head of NTIA's Office of Policy Analysis and
Development.
Mobile privacy is also a focus of federal bills. While most of
them have collected dust in the past year, the Judiciary Committee
last Thursday passed a lesser-known location-privacy bill sponsored
by Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., the first of the recent privacy bills
to pass the committee stage, moving it closer to a vote on the
Senate floor. Its primary goal is to require companies to obtain
consent before collecting or sharing a user's mobile-location
data.
Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican on the
Judiciary Committee, voted for the bill, but expressed misgivings
and alluded in his comments to a letter opposing the bill from the
Interactive Advertising Bureau. "This is an incredibly complex
industry that 's ever-evolving," he said. "The last thing that we
want to do is race something through that has a negative impact and
unintended consequences on an industry."
With hundreds of thousands of mobile apps and developers, can
government really police mobile privacy? The FTC and others are
looking to California -- home to many mobile platforms and
developers -- for guidance. In February, California Attorney
General Kamala Harris announced an agreement with mobile-app
platform companies: Amazon,
Apple, Google,
Hewlett-Packard,
Microsoft and
Research in Motion. Facebook joined in June.
The firms agreed to require developers to offer consumers more
information about data collection. The companies are already
required under state law to present an app privacy policy before
download. Earlier this month, the state took legal action against
Delta Airlines for not prominently posting a mobile-app privacy
policy.
