Administration Readies Big Data and Privacy Report

The Administration signaled that it would release its long-awaited report on privacy and big data this week. In an interview with AP over the weekend, White House Counselor John Podesta, who has been tasked by President Obama to lead the review effort, indicated that the report will highlight the extraordinary common good benefits of increasingly accurate analytical predictions. It is also likely that the report will focus some attention on big data and discrimination. In anticipation, SIIA posted this blog, noting that current law works to control possible discriminatory uses of data.

Patent Reform, Manager’s Amendment Delayed

The anticipated Monday release of a manager’s amendment for Thursday’s markup has been delayed with the earliest release cited as this evening. Some attribute the delay to a coalition of large patent holders who are contesting crucial provisions. Negotiations will continue – and hopefully be finalized – later today. Any further delay would most certainly mean the Thursday markup will be pushed to next week. As these developments are in a state of flux and liable to change, stay tuned.

Netmundial Internet Governance Conference a Success

The conference, hosted by the Brazilian government in Sao Paulo April 23-24, concluded with an outcome statement on principles to guide Internet governance and a “roadmap” for future Internet governance reform. SIIA welcomed the outcome because the participants supported continued multistakeholder Internet governance, encouraged ICANN to reach out beyond its normal range of stakeholders for advice on the IANA transition, and highlighted the importance of qualified stakeholder participation in meetings. The outcome is non-binding but will feed into other meetings this year such as the ICANN 50 meeting in London June 22-26 (the meeting is open to all who wish to attend, but the registration deadline is May 2), WSIS +10 High Level Event in Geneva June 10-13, and the IGF meeting in Istanbul September 2-5. For the next year or so, Internet governance discussions will be dominated by the question of who will succeed NTIA and Verisign in managing the domain name server system, but there are many other Internet governance issues such as cybersecurity, ISO standards, IVP6, spam, to name just a few, that also require international consideration. Currently, ICANN is requesting input by May 8 on its suggested process for developing a proposal for the IANA transition.

Brazilian President Internet Bill of Rights at Netmundial

In a symbolic gesture, the President of Brazil, Dilma Roussef, signed the bill shortly before delivering opening remarks at the Netmundial conference. The impetus for the bill came as a result of the Snowden revelations, prompting calls to include data localization requirements in the law. However, partly as a result of successful advocacy and partly because of the implementation challenges, data localization was not included. The bill does include a network neutrality mandate, limits on metadata collection, requirements that companies collecting data in Brazil comply with Brazilian law (even if the data is transferred overseas), fines for non-complying companies of up to 10% of revenues of the company in Brazil, and many other features generally designed to enhance individuals’ protection. There is also a provision saying that Internet intermediaries are not liable for content that users post online.

SIIA Comments to FTC on Consumer Score Regulation

In comments to the FTC in response to their workshop on Alternative Scoring Products, SIIA urged the agency to focus consumer score regulation on prevention of actual harm. It is SIIA’s view that the workshop did not reveal evidence of significant unregulated harmful acts or practices that could result from the use of consumer scores. If the need for additional consumer protections is substantiated by compelling evidence, these protections should be undertaken at the stage of usage or implementation, rather than at the stages of data collection or analysis. As an alternative to increased government regulation, companies need to take on a greater role in consumer protection. Such an accountability framework would shift the burden of responsibility for protecting consumers from harm, from the data subject to those entities that engage in collection, analysis and use of such data.

David LeDuc is Senior Director, Public Policy at SIIA. He focuses on e-commerce, privacy, cyber security, cloud computing, open standards, e-government and information policy. Follow the SIIA public policy team on Twitter at @SIIAPolicy.