Through a coalition called Privacy for America, the nation’s principal advertising trade associations sent a letter to Congress today calling for it to consider and pass privacy legislation to set a single federal standard for the country. We strongly support the effort.
The ongoing debate over how to protect privacy in the digital age is not about advertising. It’s about people’s right to freedom from fear of harm or abuse in the market for their data. It’s also about their ability to engage and control how their information is accessed, used, and distributed in the marketplace. How those challenges are met in law will profoundly impact our business along with our clients’ and partners’. We are prepared to rise to that challenge. As citizens and members of our larger communities, we want to support a consumer protection standard and law that our neighbors can embrace.
As technology, media, data, and marketing professionals, we need to modernize our infrastructure, ensure accountability to consumers and regulators across the actors touching people’s data, and provide transparency into our data practices to reverse the crisis in trust in what we do. And we need to update law to ensure rules are enforced.
The proposed outline by Privacy for America for a law constitutes the right framework to relieve consumers of the burden of sorting through myriad onerous privacy notices in an effort to protect their privacy and instead creates clear, enforceable requirements for businesses to collect and use data responsibly. It’s a path forward I think we in this industry can all walk together.