NTIA Announces First Privacy Multistakeholder Meeting on Mobile Transparency
Last Friday, NTIA announced its first privacy multistakeholder meeting to develop voluntary industry codes of conduct. The first meeting will be held on July 12th, and the first topic will be transparency in how companies providing applications and interactive services for mobile devices. In response to the announcement, SIIA released a statement welcoming the process and announcing our intentions to participate. In carrying out the plan established in the White House’s Privacy Blueprint released earlier this year, the NTIA will lead a series of these multistakeholder meetings concurrently to develop legally enforceable codes of conduct.
FTC Spokeo Settlement Helps Clarify Applicability of Online Info. for Screening
On June 12, 2012 the Federal Trade Commission announced a settlement with Spokeo in regard to its complaint for non-compliance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act. This decision should be read in conjunction with the FTC’s letter from May 2011 in the case of Social Intelligence. Social Intelligence also compiled information from online sources and provided reports to its customers for FCRA covered purposes. There has been some question, especially among the general public, regarding whether information gathered online could legally be used for employment screening, credit granting and insurance purposes. Taken together these FTC cases suggest that compiling information from online sources for these purposes is permissible but covered by the FCRA.
In addition, it is worth noting that there are significant First Amendment issues in this area. The 2011 Supreme Court decision in Sorrel v IMS struck down on First Amendment grounds a Vermont statute that restricted the ability of an information service company to use prescription information for marketing purposes. In its wake several challenges to FCRA have been filed, and more might follow. In that regard, at a recent industry meeting with privacy executives, FTC Commissioner Julie Brill noted that a successful First Amendment challenge to FCRA might also strike down the immunity from libel actions granted under FCRA. She also noted that the FTC had intervened in the GIS challenge to FCRA, one of the offspring of the Sorrel case.
New Members of TPP Could Help add Support to U.S. Positions
On June 18, the US and the other eight negotiating countries in the Trans-Pacific Partnership discussions agreed to extend an invitation to Mexico. And today, Canada received a similar invitation. Neither country would be able to participate in the upcoming July 2 negotiating session in San Diego, since under the fast-track rules USTR is following, the US Congress needs to have 90 days to review this expansion of the negotiating group. This move to expand the negotiating group could help the US in its IP and cross-border discussions. It might, however, make it more difficult to complete the negotiations this year.
Delays Likely in New ICANN gTLD Delegation Process
The ICANN Government Advisory Committee (GAC) has indicated that it will issue any of its “early warnings” for the 1930 gTLD applications after the Toronto meeting in October 2012. It does not intend to issue any “consensus advice” on gTLDs to the ICANN Board until at least April 2013 (including consensus advice opposing any gTLD application). This is significant because, assuming the ICANN Board will not move forward without allowing GAC the opportunity to weigh in on all applications, no applications will be approved until at least 2013.
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David LeDuc is Senior Director, Public Policy at SIIA. He focuses on e-commerce, privacy, cyber security, cloud computing, open standards, e-government and information policy.