The Association, a national education and advocacy group for the technology industry, claims that further regulation of on-line privacy is premature. Its report concludes that there are no known quantifiable benefits to such regulation and that “the market continues to respond to consumer concerns about on-line privacy.”
The study was authored by Robert Hahn, Director of the AEI-Brookings Joint Center for Regulatory Studies and Research Associate at Harvard University. The Association for Competitive Technology supported his research effort.
A summary of the study states:
“Based on 17 estimates from firms in ten states and using multiple technologies, the study assumes $100,000 as the average cost to make web sites compliant with access provisions and to create tracking databases in order to prove compliance when threatened with private lawsuits or government enforcement actions.”
The proposed privacy laws referred to are the Consumer Privacy Protection Act, the Consumer Internet Privacy Enhancement Act, the Consumer Online Privacy and Disclosure Act and the Spyware Control and Privacy Protection Act.