Our local 9th district congressman, Rep. Rick Boucher, appears on the techie blogs and news sites today with his draft of privacy legislation for online ad networks.
I suspect this is somehow related to the data-sharing that lets Facebook keep sending me all those “date hot grannies in [your county’s name here]” ads.
Organizations like the Center for Digital Democracy and Consumer Watchdog are using terms like “industry-friendly” to describe the draft legislation.
Boucher’s press release says the discussion draft “confers privacy rights on Internet users.” See that address for an executive summary and the 27-page bill as a PDF.
More:
- MediaPost Publications Consumer Groups Pan Boucher Privacy Bill 05/05/2010.
- NYTimes: Privacy Bill Finally in Draft, Both Sides Weigh In
- WSJ: Proposed privacy regulation wins few fans
- WSJ interview (Feb. 2010): Boucher calls for Internet ad regulation
The more digital ink Boucher gets over this, the more my students (and maybe some geeks from farther away) will be asking themselves, “What’s a mild-mannered politician from the hills of western Virginia doing poking around the Internet?”
For those uninformed folks, here are a few bytes of history: Boucher helped invent the commercial Internet; WPost profile; techpresident discussion.
mild-mannered reporter who found computers & the Web in grad school in the 1980s (Wesleyan) and '90s (UNC); taught journalism, media studies, Web production; retired to write, make music, photograph sunsets & walks in the woods.
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