X-SciTech

Are Gov't Web Sites Up To Snuff?

June 14, 2000 / 8:32 AM EDT / CBS

A group of Republicans in the House has asked the White House if government web sites meet the standards recently set out by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in its pitch for new powers to guard online privacy.

In a letter sent Friday, the lawmakers noted that the federal government, through agencies like the Internal Revenue Service, collected and stored far more personal information than the private sector.

"It would be hypocritical for the federal government to mandate a standard on the private sector that it cannot itself meet," said the letter to President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore.

The letter was signed by House Majority Leader Dick Armey from Texas, Billy Tauzin of Louisiana who chairs the House Commerce Committee's communications subcommittee, and Robert Goodlatte of Virginia, the co-chairman of the House Internet Caucus.

What You Can Do

Yes, there is something you can do if you're worried about privacy while surfing the Web.

Ways that Internet users can protect their privacy from online advertising companies:

Find and read a site's privacy policy before doing business with it.
Go to DoubleClick's site and read its privacy policy. While there, you can opt out of its advertising tracking.
Set your browser to either notify you when a site delivers a cookie, or refuse cookies altogether.
Consider privacy tools, like IDcide or Zero Knowledge Systems' Freedom, which can block online tracking or make you anonymous by encrypting your Web travels and e-mail.

There are also numerous organizations, public and private, which track internet privacy; check out our related links section on this page for more on how to protect your personal information while online.

In a report to Congress May 22, a 3-2 majority of the FTC sought legislative backing for a new policy-making role on Web privacy but the White House said it would prefer to see industry police itself.

An aide to Armey said the letter was aimed at keeping the administration "honest."

The General Accounting Office -- the investigative arm of Congress -- has also been asked to conduct a survey of government web sites using the same method the FTC used in a survey of commercial sites.

Marc Rotenberg, director of the Electronic Priacy Information Center, said the government worked under the Privacy Act of 1974 which contained protections in excess of the FTC principles.

"However there is a question of oversight and enforcement, and I suspect the congressmen are right to ask the question," Rotenberg said.

The Online Privacy Alliance, representing some of the largest commercial interests in computing and the Internet, has called the FTC proposal overly broad, impractical and unnecessary.

A spokeswoman for the alliance said many government and private Internet sites were still learning how to clearly state their privacy principles to make customers more comfortable using their sites.

"If some congressmen are calling on the government to be more vigilant in their posting of privacy policies we wholeheartedly support that," said spokeswoman Sydney Rubin.

The FTC report said web sites that collect personal identifying information should be required to comply with the following four widely accepted fair information practices:

a clear statement of the site's privacy policy, including how information collected will be used,
offer consumers choices on how their personal identifying information is used beyond the initial purpose it was supplied,
provide reasonable access for consumers to the information a web site has collected about them,
and take reasonable steps to protect the security of the information they collect from consumers.