WASHINGTON, DC -- Commercial Web sites that collect ?personally identifiable information? would be required to disclose what kind of information they collect from potential customers and how they use it, under legislation introduced Wednesday by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.

McCain, chairman of the Commerce Committee, is sponsoring the ?Consumer Privacy Enhancement Act? along with Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., and Spencer Abraham, R-Mich.

The bill specifically will require Web sites ?to provide consumers with clear and conspicuous notice about their information collection practices? and offers an opt-out provision for consumers. Several other bills require consumers to opt-in, a more stringent, but also perhaps more stifling measure.

McCain Spokesperson Nancy Ives said that the legislation would require Web sites to query the user when he or she first visits the site on whether the customer consents to having personal information collected.

The bill also commissions a study on Internet privacy from the National Academy of Sciences and offers the Federal Trade Commission an enforcement mechanism.

McCain said that enacting basic legislation now is a must, adding that congressional proponents of establishing a privacy commission and refraining from legislation could wind up burying the issue under an avalanche of politics. Kerry said that commissions amount to ?political gamesmanship,? and ?smack of politics.?

McCain added that the results of other commissions on Internet issues have produced little more than gridlocked groups of people whose opinions already were set in stone by the time they were hand-picked by congressional leadership. He pointed specifically to the Advisory Commission on Electronic Commerce and the Internet taxation debate.

While a raft of other privacy legislation for e-commerce also is threading its way over Capitol Hill, Reps. Asa Hutchinson, R-Ark., and James Moran, D-Va., have advocated a more hands-off approach, instead seeking to create a commission to study privacy issues -- and only then recommending possible legislative solutions.

A similar measure exists in the Senate, sponsored by Sens. Robert Torricelli, D-N.J., and Herb Kohl, D-Wis. McCain said he is hopeful that the Commerce Committee could unanimously mark up the bill by the end of the session this fall, but said that it could be difficult, with potential opposition coming from Ranking Democrat Ernest ?Fritz? Hollings, D-S.C., Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and

Communications Subcommittee Chairman Conrad Burns, R-Mont.
He also said that he would be disappointed if the bill instead were inserted as a rider on one of the appropriations measures currently working its way through the House or Senate.

The legislation?s unveiling comes at a time when Internet privacy issues are gaining velocity and prominence in both Congress and the Clinton administration.

At least some of the current buzz on Internet privacy inside the Beltway comes from recent data protection violations, including the high-profile case of Toysmart.com, a member of online privacy standards group TRUSTe. Though an adherent to TRUSTe?s practices, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) last week forced the defunct online toy retailer to refrain from selling off its subscriber list as a way to pay down its debt.

The FTC also recently said it would file a complaint against Toysmart.com in federal court, charging the company with failing to hold to the standards of the Children?s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), which forbids the collection of personal information from children less than 13 years of age, without parental consent.

Legislation also currently exists in Congress that would apply the strictures of COPPA to all Internet shoppers.
The House of Representatives, meanwhile, has contributed to the issue in its own way by passing an amendment on an appropriations bill that forbids the federal government from dropping cookies on Web surfers? hard drives.

A competing group of Congress members is seeking what they called ?baseline? privacy legislation, including Senate Judiciary Committee Ranking Democrat Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and House Telecommunications, Trade and Consumer Protection Subcommittee Chairman W.J. ?Billy? Tauzin, R-La.
McCain noted during Wednesday?s press conference that financial and medical privacy issues are covered in different bills because of the different standards involved.

Robert MacMillan, Newsbytes