The Senate Commerce Committee has set a May 19 date for its planned hearing on cell phone privacy.
That hearing will come in the Consumer Protection subcommittee, where Commerce Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D- W. Va.) says he will "push for consumer privacy."
The hearing will include witnesses from Apple, Google and Facebook, all of which have been under Capitol Hill scrutiny for mobile geolocation data sharing (Google, Apple) and data breaches (Facebook).
Witnesses scheduled to appear are Facebook CTO Bret Taylor; Morgan Reed, executive director, Association for Competitive Technology; Catherine A. Novelli, VP, worldwide government affairs, Apple; Alan Davidson, director of public policy for the Americas, Google and Amy Guggenheim Shenkan, president, Common Sense Media.
The hearing follows one last week in the Senate Judiciary privacy subcommittee at which Davidson also appeared.
Rockefeller has teed up online privacy and cybersecurity legislation and has made online data protection, particularly that of children, a priority for his committee. That comes as the Federal Trade Commission and Commerce Department are preparing final recommendations on online privacy protections and as the White House this week and late last were proposing a legislative package of online security protections.
