McGuinness & Associates, Inc.

With the FTC essentially holding their coats and listening, National Association of Legal investigators representatives today joined with NCISS leaders and a virtual Who's Who of the privacy advocate community to discuss and debate legislative issues while Federal Trade Commission staff looked on and facilitated.

The meeting was organized by NALI Legislative Chairman Robert Townsend and Privacy Rights Clearing House Director Beth Givens, with the assistance of California Association of Licensed Investigators President and NCISS Director, Francie Koehler. With over two dozen participants, the three-hour meeting provided for a lively discussion of the availability of personal information over the internet and what the investigative community considers to be the legitimate uses to which that information is put.

It is fair to say from the dialogue, most of the privacy advocates were not convinced that personal identifying information should be available to anyone for any purpose that the consumer did not specifically authorize. The NCISS Legislative Committee team of lobbyist Larry Sabbath, Eddy McClain and BRIAN McGUINNESS put forth the position that NCISS supports legislation which would eliminate the rogue information brokers from selling data to anyone willing to pay the price, but allow continued data base access to licensed investigators for legitimate legal and business purposes.

With FTC Division of Financial Practices official Peggy Twohig officiating, Robert Townsend introduced the investigative opinion and eloquent presentations were made by Francie Koehler, Kitty Hailey, Deborah Aylward and NALI National Director Larry Troxel with able support from TALI member William Fason. While these representations seemed to edify and interest the many FTC staffers/attorneys who were present, including opinion letter writers William Haynes and Clarke Brinckerhoff , the privacy advocates did not appear to be swayed. They maintained the "Fair Use" principle, which is that collecting personal identifiers may only be done with the consumer's permission. The privacy community seems to subscribe to the premise that there is no justification to locate and identify someone that does not wish their information to be used, no matter the legal or law enforcement purpose.

In addition to Ms. Givens, privacy representatives included James Dempsey and Paula Bruening from the Center for Democracy and Technology; Andrew Shen and Chris Hoofnagle of the Electronic Privacy Information Center; Evan Hendricks, editor of Privacy Times; Robert Ellis Smith publisher of Privacy Journal; Jean Ann Fox of Consumer Federation of America; Robert Gellman, privacy and information consultant; and Ed Mierzwinski of US Public Interest Research Group. Also attending for the FTC were Joel Winston of Financial Practices, Joanna Crane and Helen Goff Foster of the Identity Theft Program, attorneys all.

Following this meeting, some of the NCISS group met with aides of Senator Diane Feinstein, D-CA, to discuss details of the identity theft bill which she intends to reintroduce shortly. Suggested language will be submitted on our behalf by lobbyist Larry Sabbath. It was interesting to note as our group left Senator Feinstein's office, some of the privacy advocates were walking in. Quite a coincidence. Wonder what they were doing there?

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