With political pressures in full force and the power of votes at their peak, recent congressional hearings directly impacting the online world come are more influential than ever before. Real change is facing all facets of the online portfolio, from online advertising to the home page of a corporate web site. Top integrated agencies are already taking steps to address many of these issues, but continual monitoring is becoming a fact of life at these organizations.

It is not the fear of a MicroGoogahoo taking over the world's search and banner ad inventory, but a seemingly quixotic backroom court and its paperwork procedures. Liberal and libertarian forces have been railing against the Bush administration over the FISA court, an outlet helping counterterrorism investigators to conduct easier wiretapping and other surveillance of U.S. citizens with the assistance of major telecom companies. Its techniques have been sending privacy advocates into an uproar.

So why is this not just another wonk issue for Rush Limbaugh and the Daily Kos to battle out through their respective channels? The presidential race has only inflamed privacy rights as an issue due to its partisan origin and is generating legislation both nationally and locally. With the FISA court issue far too controversial to result in any meaningful change, many legislators are finding online tracking as safe, low hanging fruit to shore up civil liberties credentials without having to face a national security guillotine.

Three areas this directly impacts are corporate web sites, existing online ad targeting, and future innovation in behavioral targeting techniques.

Corporate web sites must now ensure that they properly place a privacy policy link on their home page. Even Google lost this battle, fighting to preserve its preciously quiet home page only to acquiesce as the result of the California Online Privacy Protection Act of 2003.

Several policy groups, such as The Electronic Privacy Information Center, Privacy Rights Clearinghouse and the World Privacy Forum, have grown out of the growing concern over online privacy and figure to become powerful voices. This means that companies will have to buffer themselves against future changes by taking aggressive steps to appear transparent. Current best practices regarding landing page privacy language may expand to other areas as web interactivity grows.

It is not just that a person is served an ad that has become controversial but how. With ISPs now trying to get into the behavioral targeting space, alarms are ringing because of the logistical nature of the users' inability to easily turn the tracking switch on and off. The more innovative tracking techniques become, concerns grow over a private company potentially becoming the new Big Brother. Civil Liberties groups are backed by those with legitimate concerns as well as those who lack the understanding, and interest in learning about, our industry. So these operations quickly turn to the field they know best -- the halls of congress.

Keeping a keener eye on the Federal Trade Commission will be necessary for online marketers in the future as the organization figures to play a larger role in online advertising moving forward. Last year the U.S. Senate
proposed five guidelines for self-regulation in the behavioral advertising industry.

Full regulation is not imminent as the U.S. House recently chose not to play an active role just yet. But now that the issue has been raised, it is sure to be brought up again, especially if individual states follow California's lead and begin enacting their own regulation.