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A Microsoft-led group set up three years ago has backed away from its original goal of pushing for comprehensive U.S. privacy legislation. Originally, the Consumer Privacy Legislative Forum was set up to bring a diverse array of consumer companies, technology vendors and even advocacy groups together and help drive privacy legislation. But now the group has been renamed the Business Forum for Consumer Privacy and is instead being billed as "an organization focused on fostering innovation in consumer privacy governance," according to the group's new mission statement. The Forum has released a white paper at the International Association of Privacy Professionals conference held in Washington this week. "What the organization is doing is developing the framework that would make new governance possible," said Martin Abrams, an adviser to the Forum who is executive director with the Centre for Information Policy Leadership at Hunton & Williams, an international law firm. Two of the Forum's original members, Symantec and the Center for Democracy and Technology, say they have dropped out. Eastman Kodak has also dropped out, according to Abrams. He was not authorized to say who the current members are, but the group appears to include Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, eBay and Google. U.S. consumers are covered by a patchwork of state and federal laws that are confusing for companies, and which often force consumers to work hard to protect their own data. Many of the Forum's members would like to change things, but it appears that coming up with legislative proposals was too much.

A group of U.S. companies, led by technology giants Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard and eBay, is set to outline recommendations for new federal data-privacy legislation that could make life easier for consumers and lead to a standard federal breach-notification law. The recommendations, which were developed by a group of industry players called the Consumer Privacy Legislative Forum, are set to be released at an upcoming privacy conference six weeks from now, according to Peter Cullen, Microsoft's chief privacy officer. The companies have been working for the past three years to encourage the adoption of federal consumer data-privacy laws and to answer the question of what federal legislation should look like, Cullen said in an interview. Other forum members include Google, Oracle, Procter & Gamble and Eli Lilly. One idea is that laws should make it easier for consumers to understand what they're getting into when they share their personal data with Web sites, Cullen said. "The whole focus on consent really puts an unfair burden on the consumer," he said. "My mom doesn't know what an IP address is." The recommendations will cover rules around data use and the ability of consumers to correct inaccurate data. And they will cover data breach notification, which is now covered by a patchwork of state laws. Simplifying breach-notification laws by creating a single federal standard is important, Cullen said Wednesday while speaking at a discussion of privacy policy in San Francisco. "It's not that there is no privacy law. There's actually too much privacy law," he said. "If you think about data-breach notification laws just as an example, there are 38 state laws, many of them very different." "We need to think about much more of a framework approach." Congress has passed some laws covering consumer data privacy, such as the 1996 Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), but existing laws do not comprehensively cover consumer privacy in general.

"A key, centrist digital rights group is set to put out a report calling for strong federal privacy laws and guidelines to regulate the growing tracking and targeting of Americans online. It argues that the self-regulation approach that industry fights for just hasn't worked. The online ad industry has "historically failed to fully implement its self-regulatory principles," according to the 34-page draft report by the Center for Democracy and Technology. CDT is a centrist D.C. group that works with and is substantially funded by the tech industry, including companies like Facebook, Google and AOL that are deeply invested in targeted ads. "Recently revised self-regulatory principles still fall short (.pdf) even as written," charges the draft, obtained by Wired.com. These tough words spearhead a new tactic for a group more used to convening inside-the-Beltway tech policy forums than launching ACLU-style send-outraged-e-mail campaigns. The CDT, which splintered off from the rabble-rousing Electronic Frontier Foundation 15 years ago, is also planning to launch a "Take Back Your Privacy" campaign on Thursday, designed to garner support for its call for comprehensive federal privacy legislation. Dozens of tech firms, known and obscure, record users' behaviors as they interact with search engines, blogs, e-commerce sites and even government websites. The tracking goes on in the background with little knowledge by consumers and even less oversight from government authorities. The tech industry - like others subject to potentially blunt-forced government regulation - has argued that policing itself was enough to prevent egregious privacy intrusions that could proliferate without any real chance individuals would even be aware of them."