The US Government, in the shape of vice-president Al Gore appears to have shifted its position slightly on internet privacy and is now advocating legislation in an effort to prevent companies from gathering information about children from their use of the internet. He also advocated abolishing plans to suspend plans to assign every American a healthcare ID form the cradle to the grave in a further attempt to deter identity theft. Until now the government has advocated leaving the issue of privacy protection up to the internet industry. Gore’s so-called electronic bill of rights initiative was first announced by him in May (05/15/98). However Friday’s announcement did not deal at all with two of the biggest privacy issues: encryption and the impending European Union legislation, which means that no European country will be able to exchange data with countries that do not disclose fully how the data is to be used, and for each country to establish a data protection agency to monitor privacy policies. At present the EU does not deem the US to have adequate data protection legislation in place. Gore praised groups such as the Online Privacy Alliance, a 50-odd member consortium formed in May to try and form industry self- regulating privacy policies for adults. It counts IBM, America Online and Microsoft among its members. However, he warned that if self-regulation does not work in that area, the government will act. The Federal Trade Commission recently urged Congress to pass adult privacy laws if the industry does not act by the end of the year.
