A. Lawmakers Vow Tough Spyware Laws.

WASHINGTON -- The chairman of the House Energy and Commerce committee criticized the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Thursday for not doing enough to halt the spread of spyware and vowed to pass tough legislation to thwart its use. Joe Barton also urged Congress to pass legislation this year in order to "cure this cancer on the Internet."

Consumer and privacy advocates are concerned about the growing number of programs that often surreptitiously piggyback on downloaded files, report back Internet traffic patterns to advertisers and generate unwanted popups.

Spyware is often vaguely defined and often confused with adware, but generally refers to any software that covertly gathers user information through the user's Internet connection without his or her knowledge, sometimes for advertising purposes. Most forms of adware, however, are installed with the user's knowledge.

The comments in the House came on the heels of a day-long spyware workshop the FTC sponsored last week, which concluded that the solution to thwarting invasive programs is less likely to be found in state or federal legislation and more likely with more consumer education.

"I think it is very difficult at this time to draw a line around what is spyware and what is not," Howard Beales, the FTC's director of consumer protection, told the House Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade and Consumer Protection. FTC Commissioner Mozelle Thompson added, "I think targeted legislation here at this time will be very difficult, if not impossible to define."

The folksy, tough-talking Barton, who replaced the retired Billy Tauzin as chairman of the Commerce Committee in February, disagreed. "Let me just clue you [in]. Unless I'm totally mistaken, when we get ready to move this bill, all but a handful of the members of this committee are going to be supportive of it," Barton told Thompson and Beales. "I'm not a software expert, but I can count votes on my committee. I would encourage the federal officials at this table to work with us on how to clarify the language that helps you enforce the law, instead of defending something that is not defendable."

Thompson said the FTC already has laws to prevent the use of computers to spy on consumers. Last week, Thompson asked industry Internet provider leaders such as Microsoft, America Online and Earthlink to produce a set of best practices for the use of adware, including disclosure statements to consumers regarding what they are about to download.

"At the outset, I think I'd like to have a further conversation about what kind of practices fall outside what the industry thinks is fair practice," Thompson told reporters. "It seems to me there are some kind of practices that we may consider unfair or deceptive. We have existing laws to go after some of them. We have some powerful ones right now. We need to have a discussion, an ongoing dialogue, with industry, so they can also act partly as our eyes and ears."

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