Seventeen advocacy groups on Wednesday asked the Federal Trade Commission to propose a sweeping new privacy law aimed at giving consumers "meaningful safeguards and control of their personal
information."
"Privacy law in the United States is in disarray," state the groups in a letter to FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz. "Existing laws don't adequately address new business practices.
Entire industries that traffic in the personal information of Americans have sprung up with little or no regulation."
The groups to sign include the ACLU, Center for Digital Democracy,
Electronic Frontier Foundation and US PIRG.
Among other items, the groups are urging the FTC to "set out specific regulations for the collection of information by the online advertising
industry to help ensure that consumers have some meaningful control over their personal information."
The FTC, which recently held three roundtable discussions about privacy, is expected to
soon issue a report addressing online privacy.