Two of the privacy groups that exhorted the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to investigate Microsoft for privacy and security violations in Microsoft .NET Passport are now asking the FTC to reconsider its early August settlement with the software giant. Citing concerns that the agreement doesn't do enough to protect consumers, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) have separately lobbied the FTC to come down harder on Microsoft.
"We're saying \[to the FTC,\] you have a good purpose here \[in the settlement\], which is to make sure these new services don't violate privacy, and these are the additional steps that need to be taken to make sure these goals are realized," said EPIC Executive Director Marc Rotenberg. EPIC has asked the FTC to make public the Microsoft security and privacy audits the agreement requires and to force Microsoft to let Passport users access their records so they can make corrections and deletions to personal data. The CCIA is also asking for further remedies, although it won't detail them publicly at this time.
The FTC says it's reviewing the requests. "We'll look at what the comments have to say and see whether we think it makes sense and go from there," FTC Director of Consumer Protection J. Howard Beales III told "The Seattle Times."