Privacy, Industry Groups Clash in White House Big-Data Comments
Ubiquitous data collection impedes elemental privacy rights and causes discrimination, but is also a vital economic driver that would wilt under excessive regulation, said comments to a White House big-data review. Ahead of Monday night’s comment deadline, many major privacy advocates, consumer advocates, technology industry groups and major tech companies had either weighed in or told us they planned to do so before midnight. The White House didn’t make the comments public.
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As part of its 90-day big data review, the White House has held numerous meetings with a range of tech sector industry groups, CEOs, academics and privacy advocates, White House officials and stakeholders have said since the project was launched in January (WID Jan 24 p8). The administration also put together three workshops at various universities around the country that included both public presentations and closed meetings. The first focused on the technical aspects of big data (WID March 4 p3), while the second shifted to the social and ethical concerns of big data (WID March 19 p2). Tuesday’s final workshop at the University of California-Berkeley School of Law will hit on big data governance issues and possible regulatory changes. Remarks on the review fell along industry versus privacy lines.
"The inability to implement basic privacy rules,” said Center for Digital Democracy Executive Director Jeff Chester, “has resulted in the ubiquitous commercial surveillance landscape that today threatens the privacy of Americans” (http://bit.ly/1liBowh). CDD argued against the White House putting solutions into self-regulatory frameworks and multistakeholder conversations. These efforts -- such as NTIA’s multistakeholder talks on facial recognition and mobile tracking -- have “failed to address how the contemporary data collection apparatus actually works,” Chester said. He called on the White House to strengthen and update its Privacy Bill of Rights, initially intended to translate into a long-dormant legislative proposal (WID Dec 2 p1).
The White House should also push Congress to enact or rewrite several privacy-enhancing laws, said the American Civil Liberties Union. The USA Freedom Act “reins in” the big data uses by the government, said the ACLU, helping to protect citizens from unnecessary government searches of their data. The Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) has “not been substantially updated since 1986,” and must be altered to require search warrants for email, cloud-stored documents and private communications like text messages, the ACLU said. Gautam Hans, a Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT) attorney, echoed the call to update ECPA.
CDT’s comments, being filed Monday night, also touch on the “need for comprehensive privacy legislation,” Hans told us. “We have a bunch of sectoral laws ... but the issues big data raises point to the need for a comprehensive law.” The White House can look to the Fair Information Practice Principles (FIPPs) to guide a comprehensive framework, he said. Until then, companies should adhere to FIPPs to best protect consumer privacy, Hans said. Other privacy and consumer groups -- such as the Consumer Watchdog, Electronic Frontier Foundation and Electronic Privacy Information Center -- told us they were filing remarks Monday night.
FIPPs are “a potentially serious barrier to much of the innovation we anticipate from the big data revolution,” commented the Technology Policy Institute (TPI), with funders including Amazon, AT&T, Comcast, Experian, Facebook and Google (http://bit.ly/1fHrK1O). “There is no evidence at present that big data used for commercial and other non-surveillance purposes have caused privacy harms,” TPI said. “The proliferation of big data in recent years does not appear to have increased identity fraud and/or data breaches.” TPI cited research showing the total dollar amount of fraud has fallen since 2005. There was $29.1 billion in average fraud from 2005 to 2009, a number that fell to $19.2 billion from 2010 to 2013, TPI said. “All these measures show more of a decline when considered relative to the growth of the economy and e-commerce.”
"Access to and use of data, which fuels innovation, provides tremendous benefits to consumers and our economy, and helps ensure our nation’s current competitive position globally,” commented the Interactive Advertising Bureau. Policymakers “should take care not to impose unnecessary and burdensome regulation” that would dampen these benefits, said IAB. It said the current regulatory framework and “robust” self-regulatory system are sufficient to address “concrete harms while promoting the free flow of data.” The group asked the government to “adopt levels of transparency” regarding its own data collection practices “that mirror those already implemented by the private sector."
Big data could aid numerous sectors of the economy -- healthcare, education, road safety and weather prediction, mapping, finance and macroeconomic forecasting -- said the Center for Data Innovation, affiliated with the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. “Data-driven innovation can only occur if laws encourage use and reuse of data,” the center said (http://bit.ly/1fHOMWa). A Microsoft spokesman weighed in simply by saying, “It’s good that the White House is looking at the issue and Microsoft appreciates the opportunity to participate in the session.” A Facebook spokeswoman also indicated the company planned to comment late Monday. Yahoo had no comment. -- Cory Bennett (cbennett@warren-news.com)