Internet users should be able to see what kind of information companies are collecting about them and how it's being used. That's according to US House Representative Cliff Stearns (R-FL), who plans to introduce new legislation that would give users the ability to control how their info is used in advertising. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) would play the part of the enforcer, and the bill would go along with the FTC's own privacy agenda that addresses user tracking.

Stearns discussed his plans for the upcoming bill during a panel discussion at the Technology Policy Institute (TPI) last week. The panel was actually meant to discuss the FTC's "Do Not Track" initiative, but Stearns took the opportunity during his opening remarks to emphasize the need for legislation to keep companies in check.

The new bill will be based on one that Stearns introduced in 2005—the Consumer Privacy Protection Act, also known as HR 1263. The 2005 bill asked companies to notify users upon the first instance of identifiable information collection on their websites, provide details on how the information would be used, and provide a clear instructions on how users can limit the data collection. Neither the House nor the Senate ended up voting on the bill. Based on Stearns' description of the bill, it will likely end up being a copy of the old one with some newer twists.

"The goal of the legislation is to empower consumers to make their own privacy choices. My draft legislation requires covered entities to provide consumers in clear and easy to understand language what information is being collected and how the information is being used," Stearns said in a statement. "It includes a provision for an FTC approved five-year self-regulatory program and prescribes requirements for a self-regulatory consumer dispute resolution process."

During the panel, Stearns argued that his bill would not undermine the online advertising industry, which relies heavily on targeted ads in order to make money and provide free services to users. "We do not want to disrupt a well-established and successful business model," Stearns said. What he says he wants is "more robust transparency" from the companies that collect the information—notice of data collection outside of the company's privacy policy and customers being told how to keep the information from being collected.

"We need to place the control over consumer information with the actual consumer themselves," Stearns told the floor.

Stearns' bill is supposed to go hand-in-hand with the FTC's "Do Not Track" initiative, which calls for social networking sites to set up a "browser-based mechanism through which consumers could make persistent choices." Though the sites themselves have been a little slow to get on board, actual browsers from Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Mozilla already offer users a way to prevent user data from being collected or tracked across sites.

Still, the browsers don't all treat the tracking opt-outs in the same way. Without some major support from ad companies or further pressure from the FTC, it's unlikely that the different browser features will converge anytime soon. As we wrote when we looked at a recent beta release of Firefox 4, toggling the new setting will have no real effect for users until there's broader industry support.

That industry support could come via Stearns' bill. Stearns claims that he has gotten feedback from more than 70 companies, privacy organizations, and "concerned citizens" over recent privacy legislation, which has made its way into his new draft.