Swire Testifies on Self-Regulation and Privacy Before Senate Committee

Peter Swire

Professor Peter Swire testified at a United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation hearing, led by Sen. Jay Rockefeller and titled “The Need for Privacy Protections: Is Industry Self-Regulation Adequate,” on June 28.

The committee welcomed Swire, along with Global Privacy and Policy Leader of Mozilla Alex Fowler, President and CEO of the Association of National Advertisers Bob Liodice, and President of TechFreedom Berin Szoka, to its witness panel.

Swire provided historical context about self-regulation and privacy to the committee, including points such as government regulation leading to self-regulation, online privacy attention progresses Do Not Track, and that more attention should be given to technical and administrative measures for online privacy de-identification.

“I personally would not like to have an Internet where I believed that each moment of my browsing might easily be breached and shown to the entire world. For you and your families, it would reduce the quality of the Internet if you thought that any page you visited needed to be treated like something that might be released to the public,” Swire testified. “That is not the experience we have today. However, if we do not foster good practices, then we risk losing confidence in our use of the Internet.”