GOPers want feds to follow online privacy rules first

House Majority Leader Richard Armey, R-Texas, and other House members told the White House Friday that the federal government must ensure it is abiding by the online privacy standards called for in legislation proposed by the Federal Trade Commission before imposing such requirements on the private sector.

The FTC issued a report last month calling on Congress to enact legislation that would require commercial Web sites collecting personal identifying information to abide by four principles. These include requiring sites to notify users when they are collecting personal information, to give consumers choice over how the information is used, to provide users access to information about them, and to take steps to secure personal information that sites collect.

In a letter to President Clinton and Vice President Al Gore, Armey, Rep. Billy Tauzin, R-La., chairman of the House Commerce Committee's telecommunications subcommittee, and Rep. Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., co-chairman of the House Internet Caucus, said Congress will be "carefully reviewing" the FTC's report. And they called on the administration to provide information about whether the federal government's Web sites would meet the standards called for by the commission.

"It would be hypocritical for the federal government to mandate a standard on the private sector that it cannot itself meet," the lawmakers wrote.

In particular, they asked the administration to provide information about what percentage of federal Web sites meet the criteria outlined by the FTC, whether the administration supports such criteria, and-if so-whether the government would "lead by example" by implementing the standards before pushing to have them imposed on commercial Web sites.

The lawmakers suggested the federal government has a worse track record of protecting personal data than the private sector, pointing in particular to the to the Internal Revenue Service. The agency recently had to issue apologies and offered compensation to 1,300 families for improperly releasing personal financial information about them, the lawmakers said.

"I'd be much more concerned about the IRS disclosing my personal financial information [than] about the Gap.com knowing how many pairs of jeans I've bought this year," the House members wrote.

The White House did not have any immediate comment. But administration officials have reacted coolly to the FTC proposal, saying they would like to continue to give industry self-regulation a chance and to focus legislation on narrower areas, such as medical and financial privacy.

Armey and Tauzin sent a separate letter to the General Accounting Office requesting a report to evaluate how well federal Web sites would comply with the FTC's proposed legislation. They noted that government Web sites were not included in a FTC survey released earlier this year of private Web sites' commercial practices.