• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, January 23, 2010

The Interactive Advertising Bureau is urging the Federal Communications Commission to refrain from addressing privacy issues in the national broadband plan.

"IAB believes that regulation by the commission, or potentially conflicting regulations from multiple government agencies, could stifle the Internet," the trade group said in a letter to the FCC. "Existing robust self-regulatory principles provide consumers with strong protections in a manner that has allowed the Internet to thrive, thereby benefiting the U.S. economy."

The group's filing came in response to a request for comments about privacy issues raised by the Center for Democracy & Technology. Earlier this month, that organization asked the FCC to solicit input on how to meet consumers' expectations of privacy online and build privacy protections into new technology.

The FCC made the inquiry as part of its efforts to formulate a national broadband plan, mandated by Congress last year when it passed the broadband stimulus bill.

The IAB said in its filing that the FCC should not consider online privacy issues because the broadband stimulus bill "makes no mention of privacy" and was aimed at "furthering the build out of a high-speed broadband infrastructure across the country."

The group reiterated its stance that Web companies can protect consumers' privacy by complying with self-regulatory principles. "Unlike formal regulations, which can become quickly outdated in the face of evolving technologies, self-regulation provides industry with a nimble way of responding to new challenges presented by the evolving Internet ecosystem," states the letter, which was signed by IAB Vice President for Public Policy Mike Zaneis.

Last year, the FTC issued self-regulatory guidelines generally recommending that online ad companies notify consumers about online behavioral advertising -- or tracking consumers across the Web in order to serve them ads -- and allow people to decline to participate.

Privacy advocates have been pressing for new laws to require companies to obtain consumers' consent before tracking them online for ad purposes. A coalition of nine consumer groups -- including the ACLU, Center for Digital Democracy, Consumer Federation of America, and U.S. Public Interest Research Group -- filed their own papers with the FCC Friday arguing that self-regulation by the online ad industry will not protect users' privacy. The advocacy organizations asked the commission to "consider all avenues it may use to protect consumers, including exercising its ancillary jurisdiction to address broadband privacy issues."

The privacy advocates are asking the FCC to base online privacy protections on the Fair Information Practices standards set out in 1973 by the U.S. Department of Health, Education and Welfare.

They argue in their comments that online behavioral advertising can compromise Web users' privacy even when companies don't collect people's names, but instead identify them based on "anonymous" markers like cookies. "Often, data that is believed to have been rendered anonymous can easily be "de-anonymized," and sensitive data would be linked back with the affected individual," the groups argue.