[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 14 (Wednesday, February 8, 2006)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E91]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]


      ELIMINATE WAREHOUSING OF CONSUMER INTERNET DATA ACT OF 2006

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                         HON. EDWARD J. MARKEY

                            of massachusetts

                    in the house of representatives

                      Wednesday, February 8, 2006

  Mr. MARKEY. Mr. Speaker, I rise to introduce the Eliminate 
Warehousing of Consumer Internet Data Act of 2006. This act is designed 
to ensure that personal information about consumers and their use of 
the Internet that is no longer necessary for any legitimate business 
purpose is destroyed. The warehousing of personal information about 
consumers' Internet use, data which often indicate nonpublic details of 
their lives, should not be stored needlessly awaiting compromise by 
data thieves or fraudsters or disclosure through judicial fishing 
expeditions.
  Mr. Speaker, as America's telecommunications networks continue to 
grow and broadband digital technologies become ever more prevalent, 
individuals and industries will increasingly use such networks to 
communicate and conduct commercial transactions. The ease of gathering 
and compiling personal information during such communications, both 
overtly and surreptitiously, is highly efficient due to advances in 
digital telecommunications technology and the widespread use of the 
Internet.
  As such information is gathered and gleaned from consumers, it is 
important to acknowledge that consumers have an ownership interest in 
their personal information. Information gathered about consumers over 
the Internet can provide detail about some of the most intimate aspects 
of an individual's life, including their surfing interests, 
communications with other citizens, purchases, information inquiries, 
and political or religious interests, affiliations, or speech. Certain 
information from Internet searches or website visits conducted from a 
particular computer can be obtained and stored by websites or search 
engines, and can be traced back to individual computer users. Some 
Internet search engines, for example, today can collect information 
about a consumer's search request, the Internet protocol address, the 
consumer's browser type and browser language, the date and time of the 
request, as well as information regarding cookies that may uniquely 
identify the consumer's browser.
  Mr. Speaker, I believe that in order to safeguard consumer privacy 
interests, companies that gather personal information that can identify 
individual consumers should cease to store such information after it is 
no longer necessary to render service to such consumers or to conduct 
any legitimate business practice. This is an obligation that cable 
operators today discharge. A cable operator, which can gather personal 
information about a subscriber's use of the cable system and obtain 
information about a consumer's video programming choices and use of 
their cable modem are currently required under section 631 of the 
Communications Act, 47 U.S.C. 551, to destroy any personal information 
gathered from a subscriber after it is no longer necessary for the 
purpose for which it was gathered and if there are no other pending 
legal requests for such information.
  This legislation is designed to extend to consumers similar 
protection. It does so for websites and Internet search engines who 
arguably possess information about computer users which is more 
detailed and more personalized, than information cable operators 
typically gather. It does however permit such entities to utilize such 
data to render service to consumers in a way which does not inhibit 
their ability to innovate and only requires that once the entity no 
longer has a legitimate reason to warehouse such information to destroy 
it within a reasonable period of time.
  I look forward to working with my colleagues on both sides of the 
aisle on this and other consumer privacy issues this year and in the 
future.

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