Eliminate Warehousing of Consumer Internet Data Act of 2006

ELIMINATE WAREHOUSING OF CONSUMER INTERNET DATA ACT OF 2006 -- (Extensions of Remarks - February 08, 2006)

SPEECH OF
HON. EDWARD J. MARKEY
OF MASSACHUSETTS
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 2006

* Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I rise to introduce the Eliminate Warehousing of Consumer Internet Data Act of 2006. This act is designed to ensure that personal information about consumers and their use of the Internet that is no longer necessary for any legitimate business purpose is destroyed. The warehousing of personal information about consumers' Internet use, data which often indicate nonpublic details of their lives, should not be stored needlessly awaiting compromise by data thieves or fraudsters or disclosure through judicial fishing expeditions.

* Mr. Speaker, as America's telecommunications networks continue to grow and broadband digital technologies become ever more prevalent, individuals and industries will increasingly use such networks to communicate and conduct commercial transactions. The ease of gathering and compiling personal information during such communications, both overtly and surreptitiously, is highly efficient due to advances in digital telecommunications technology and the widespread use of the Internet.

* As such information is gathered and gleaned from consumers, it is important to acknowledge that consumers have an ownership interest in their personal information. Information gathered about consumers over the Internet can provide detail about some of the most intimate aspects of an individual's life, including their surfing interests, communications with other citizens, purchases, information inquiries, and political or religious interests, affiliations, or speech. Certain information from Internet searches or website visits conducted from a particular computer can be obtained and stored by websites or search engines, and can be traced back to individual computer users. Some Internet search engines, for example, today can collect information about a consumer's search request, the Internet protocol address, the consumer's browser type and browser language, the date and time of the request, as well as information regarding cookies that may uniquely identify the consumer's browser.

* Mr. Speaker, I believe that in order to safeguard consumer privacy interests, companies that gather personal information that can identify individual consumers should cease to store such information after it is no longer necessary to render service to such consumers or to conduct any legitimate business practice. This is an obligation that cable operators today discharge. A cable operator, which can gather personal information about a subscriber's use of the cable system and obtain information about a consumer's video programming choices and use of their cable modem are currently required under section 631 of the Communications Act, 47 U.S.C. 551, to destroy any personal information gathered from a subscriber after it is no longer necessary for the purpose for which it was gathered and if there are no other pending legal requests for such information.

* This legislation is designed to extend to consumers similar protection. It does so for websites and Internet search engines who arguably possess information about computer users which is more detailed and more personalized, than information cable operators typically gather. It does however permit such entities to utilize such data to render service to consumers in a way which does not inhibit their ability to innovate and only requires that once the entity no longer has a legitimate reason to warehouse such information to destroy it within a reasonable period of time.

* I look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle on this and other consumer privacy issues this year and in the future.

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