Google and Apple called back to Senate with Facebook this time

Seth Weintraub | May 16 2011 - 10:24 pm PT

http://www.c-spanvideo.org/videoLibrary/assets/swf/CSPANPlayer.swf?pid=299421-2

CNET reports that Apple and Google have been called back to the Senate to continue to testify on privacy concerns which surfaced when it was revealed that Apple had been storing location information on iPhones and backing that up on PCs/Macs. This time Facebook was invited to speak as well.

On the docket to testify as part of a witness panel is Bret Taylor, the chief technology officer for Facebook; Catherine Novelli, Apple’s VP of worldwide government affairs; and Alan Davidson, Google’s director of public policy for the Americas. Joining them is Morgan Reed, the executive director of the Association for Competitive Technology, and Amy Guggenheim Shenkan, the president and COO of Common Sense Media. Ahead of that panel is David Vladeck, the director of the bureau of consumer protection for the Federal Trade Commission.
Notably missing is the U.S. Department of Justice, which made up part of the opening act in last week’s hearing, as well as a representative from Microsoft, which also collects location information from Windows Mobile 7 devices with a unique ID. During last week’s hearing, the Justice Department discussed forward-looking policy initiatives to require mobile providers to collect and store information about their customers, which is likely to be a topic at Thursday’s hearing.

The Senate will hold the hearing on May 19 at 10 a.m. Eastern time.

Although Senate hearings can be boring (see above), we did get some interesting information about Apple’s upcoming plans for crowdsourcing traffic data from this whole mess. (Cross-posted from 9to5Mac.com)