14 DAY TRIAL // Senator John Rockefeller (D-W.Va), chairman of the Senate's Commerce Committee, has introduced a new bill yesterday which taks the Federal Trade Commission with drafting do-not-track regulations.
Sen. Rockefeller's bill, dubbed Do-Not-Track Online Act of 2011 [pdf], comes as a broader commercial privacy legislative proposal introduced by Senators John Kerry and John McCain failed to obtain the approval of civil rights groups.
That bill, which builds on the current self-regulatory programs of the advertising industry has been deemed as lacking by privacy watchdogs.
The data collection opt-out process it supports is cumbersome and requires users to add special cookies for each of the tens of advertising networks.
In comparison, Sen. Rockefeller's proposal supports a easier to use method for consumers to specify their choice, which is to be determined by the Federal Trade Commission.
The bill calls on to the commission to promulgate "regulations that establish standards for the implementation of a mechanism by which an individual can simply and easily indicate whether the individual prefers to have personal information collected by providers of online services, including by providers of mobile applications and services."
The FTC already asked browser makers to come up with an uniform do-not-track mechanism, and most of them, with the exception of Google and Opera, seems to have came to an agreement.
Microsoft, Mozilla and Apple have all implemented, or ar in the course of implementing, an option to send a Do-Not-Track (DNT) HTTP header with every request to websites in order to inform them about the user's preference.
The task of enforcing the new regulations will fall upon the Federal Trade Commission and the attorney general of each State. With large numbers of anti-do-not-track lobbyists hired by major advertisers, like Google and Facebook, the bill's success is very uncertain.