The Obama administration has called for new laws to protect the collection and spread of information about individuals online.

Lawrence Strickling, who leads on telecommunications policy at the US Department of Commerce, said in testimony before a Senate committee recently that without legislation, “growing unease” about privacy threatened the growth of the internet economy.

“The department has concluded,” he said, “that the US consumer data privacy framework will benefit from legislation to establish a clearer set of rules ... for businesses and consumers, while preserving the innovation and free flow of information that are hallmarks of the internet”.

New laws should include “baseline consumer data privacy protections – that is, a consumer privacy bill of rights,” as well as increased enforcement powers for the Federal Trade Commission.

His testimony to the Senate Commerce Committee follows white papers last year from the Department of Commerce and Federal Trade Commission which highlighted an increasing trade in data about individuals, mainly to target them with online advertising. Although this information is almost always anonymised, in many cases it can still be used to identify individuals and frequently combines partial browsing histories with sensitive profile material from social networking sites.

The comments are particularly interesting set against the backdrop of European debate over forthcoming changes to cookie laws which must be implemented by EU Member States by 25 May.