Permission marketing experts Rosemary Smith and Jenny Moseley say the latest US privacy bill is not clever and not pretty. 

recently introduced draft privacy bill has made unlikely bedfellows of the US direct marketing industry and privacy activists who are unanimously negative in their response to the proposals.

Among other things, the Boucher-Stearns bill would require ‘covered entities’ (all but the smallest data users) to provide privacy notices and an opportunity to opt-out when personal data is collected online or offline from individuals. 

More worryingly for the US data industry and online commerce, the bill requires opt-in for any use of data by most third parties. 

The term ‘Individual’ is not defined in the draft suggesting that the measures would play out over both B2C and B2B markets.

Florida representative Stearns claims that online advertising will not be negatively impacted: “This legislation will not disrupt this well-established and successful business model,” he said in a statement, but he seems strangely ambivalent about his own proposals: “I have been working for years to enact meaningful privacy protection legislation and this draft is advancing the process. While I may not support everything in the current draft bill, it is important to get the input of stakeholders.”

Universally critical

The fact that the ‘input’ has been universally critical should be telling for the chances of this piece of flawed drafting entering into US law. The IAB sees the bill as ‘too broadly defined’ and it has been slammed by the – Google and Yahoo backed – Progress & Freedom Foundation as ‘a hodge-podge of restrictive regulatory defaults’. 

Other legislative pressures mean that the bill is unlikely to pass but the privacy issue just won’t go away.

Robert Howells, group managing director, international at Harte-Hanks Direct Marketing, comments that there is “mounting concern about Facebook’s privacy policies – and the view in some places that they are unconcerned about the wider implications of what they and other social media organisations are doing. So there is probably more public support for a privacy bill than in the recent past”. 

Meanwhile, the US DMA is vigorously promoting self-regulation as an alternative to legislation. Linda Woolley, DMA’s executive VP, government affairs, says this should be given time to work and that a way must be found “to find the appropriate balance between consumer privacy and business innovation so that Internet commerce can continue to be a driving force for job creation in this difficult economy”.  

In the medium term, concessions from the industry would seem inevitable whatever the fate of Boucher-Stearns.

 Rosemary Smith and Jenny Moseley are co-directors of Opt-4. Visit their website.