Google's Sept 26 Senate hearing plan: back privacy rules, defend ad model

Google’s top privacy staffer will defend the company’s business model at an upcoming Senate hearing, while backing the broad idea of new privacy rules. Google will face tough questions at the Sept 26 Senate Commerce Committee hearing on privacy, where chief privacy officer Keith Enright will appear alongside representatives from other tech companies as well as internet service providers. Enright said he plans to stand by the company’s ad-supported business model. “We don’t hide from that but we also recognize that that creates some additional considerations and responsibilities on our part,” he said, later emphasizing the "benefits that users and the internet generally have realized" from free, ad-supported services like Google's. But he will also point to what the company thinks would make for good privacy rules. “We actually support comprehensive baseline data protection regulations, and we want to be engaged in that conversation,” he said. He pushed back on the idea that opt-in consent to data collection should be required by law, and indicated he broadly supported the idea of federal regulations taking precedence over state rules.