Senator working on a privacy 'do-not-track' bill

The chairman of the Senate Commerce Consumer Protection Subcommittee is working on a bill aimed at giving consumers more control over whether their activities will be tracked on the Internet.

The measure could include creation of a do-not-track list, allowing consumers to opt-out of having their Web activities tracked for advertising purposes, although the bill's author, Mark Pryor, D-Ark., said in an interview he is still figuring out "how it would really work."

"The goal one way or the other is to allow the consumer more control over how much tracking" they want to allow, he said this week.

Such a list would be similar to the current Do Not Call registry that allows consumers to opt-out of receiving most unwanted telemarketing calls. Pryor said he is still drafting the measure and talking with stakeholders about it. He also said he still hasn't decided whether it would be part of a broader privacy bill or a stand-alone measure.

"I just think Americans ought to have a choice on how much their . . . Internet behavior is tracked," he said, adding some consumers may have no problem being tracked and being served ads focused on their consumer preferences.

Pryor added the bill will likely be introduced in the next Congress and not be ready for action in the lame-duck congressional session set for mid-November after the midterm elections.

Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz has voiced support for the creation of a do-not-track list as have some privacy advocates.

Industry officials, however, say such a list would be difficult to implement and that there are tools available to consumers today that give them some control over tracking technologies. "There are a lot of tools that are native to your browser that are already there for consumers to manage," Anne Toth, the head of privacy at Yahoo said during an appearance this month on C-Span's "The Communicators" program. "I think it's a matter of making them accessible and explaining their usage to consumers that makes them simpler to use."