Online Privacy Protection Testimony

Sheila F Anthony, Commissioner, Federal Trade Commission

1/01/2005
(Original Publish Date: 5/25/2000)

I am pleased the Commission is recommending that federal legislation is necessary to protect consumer privacy. Survey after survey demonstrates that public concerns about privacy have been growing and that these concerns have focused on the power of technologies to collect, store, search, and transmit large amounts of personally identifiable information. I not only share those concerns, I note that threats to consumer privacy are increasing with the merging of the offline and online worlds. In short, things may be getting worse for Americans on the privacy front.