• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, September 14, 2011

Some Internet companies in the U.S. have made no secret of their dissatisfaction with Europe's strong privacy rules -- especially a recent directive that could potentially prohibit ad companies from tracking consumers without their explicit consent. Now lawmakers in the House have convened a hearing to address the "impact and burden" of regulations in the EU.

The hearing, slated for Thursday morning by a subcommittee of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, will focus on the "challenges facing U.S. businesses in the European theater and the lessons learned from the EU experience," according to the GOP staff memo.

The memo also says that "industry observers argue EU enforcement is sporadic and inconsistent, with a seemingly disproportionate number of American companies targeted for compliance violations."

That critical language has some U.S. privacy advocates concerned that lawmakers intend to voice objections to the type of privacy laws in place in Europe.

"Given the widespread agreement across consumer organizations in both Europe and the United States that the United States lacks adequate privacy safeguards and that the U.S. privacy laws lag woefully behind current technology and business practices, we expected a hearing that would focus on the lessons that the Congress might draw from the EU experience with data protection," the groups say in a letter sent on Wednesday to Reps. Mary Bono Mack (R-Calif.) and G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.), the chair and ranking member of the subcommittee.

"There is much that U..S lawmakers could learn from a fair and balanced review of the EU Data Directive, just as the EU has learned much from the US experience," the groups add. The letter was signed by the Trans Atlantic Consumer Dialogue -- an umbrella group that includes advocates like the Center for Digital Democracy, U.S. Public Interest Research Group and the Consumer Federation of America.

Unlike the U.S., which lacks a sweeping privacy law, the EU enacted a broad data protection law in 1995. In the last several years, some European regulators tasked with implementing the data protection directive have pressured U.S. Internet companies to institute more privacy protections.

For instance, the EU's Article 29 Data Protection Working Party  said in 2008 that search engines should expunge IP addresses and other data that can be linked to individuals as soon as the search companies no longer need it, with an outer limit of six months.

Plus, regulators are in the process of deciding how to apply the privacy directive to companies that use cookies to track people's Web use. While the ultimate outcome is still in flux, officials in some countries have indicated that ad companies should obtain users' consent before setting such cookies.

Separately, various countries in Europe have their own relatively strong privacy laws that affect U.S. companies. For example, a German official said last month that sites should stop using Facebook's "like" button because it transmits data about users.