Net Privacy Could See Action in Next Congress - Page 2

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ISPs reveal use of NebuAd

The letters from Markey and his fellow legislators to the tech companies were meant as a fact-finding mission, Schafer added.

"We're trying to get a comprehensive picture of what's happening and what's out there," she said. "As we do develop some kind of legislation for the next session, we want to have all the information in front of us."

An examination of the responses from the 29 ISPs that received letters shows that five deployed NebuAd's technology. Each has since abandoned it.

Four ISPs -- Cable One, Bresnan Communications, CenturyTel and Knology -- conducted limited trials in small towns or rural areas before discontinuing the experiment. Save for Cable One, each ended the trial in either June or July, after the highly publicized move by Charter to drop the service.

The fifth, Wide Open West, or WOW, had deployed NebuAd's technology for about four months to 330,000 of its subscribers throughout the Midwest, before ending the partnership on July 8, the day before the first hearing in which Dykes testified.

In response to a question asking whether they had collected any health, financial or other sensitive information, each said it had not, and that NebuAd offered the assurance that it was only collecting anonymous data that fit into one of its innocuous ad categories.

Each also said that it had notified subscribers about the trial, and that its trial was within the boundaries of the law.

Earlier this year, the policy-reform group Center for Democracy and Technology released a legal analysis claiming that ISPs using NebuAd's technology could run afoul of state and federal wiretapping laws.

Legislation establishing protections for handling consumer data online would be welcome to the privacy advocates who have long been frustrated with congressional inaction on the subject.

For their part, heavy hitters like Google and Microsoft have expressed support for a baseline privacy law that would apply to all industries, not just the Internet. Online advertising, they argue, is evolving so quickly that legislation wouldn't be able to anticipate new developments, which could ultimately stifle innovation. The Internet, they argue, is best served by a policy of self-regulation, which is the approach the Federal Trade Commission has taken.

"The type of pushback we receive is going to depend on the kind of legislation we draft," Schafer said, noting that Markey's staff is only beginning to sort through the responses. Still, for a long-time privacy advocate such as Markey, Schafer can guess at the bill's scope.

"It's going to be an Internet-based piece of legislation, I expect," she said. "It's a concept now."