Al Franken

There are legislative reforms on the table. Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) has spearheaded efforts to eliminate forced arbitration from all consumer contracts and employment agreements.

The current Do Not Track proposal before the World Wide Web Consortium, an international Web standards body, has faced criticism from privacy advocates and leaders on Capitol Hill who say it does not do enough to protect consumers from companies that track users. In a letter to the group sent last month, Sens. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Al Franken (D-Minn.) and Rep. Joe Barton (R-Tex.) expressed concerns about the consortium's plan.

Last week Sen. Ed Markey (D-Ma), Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) and Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) wrote the W3C “expressing concern that its proposed ‘Do Not Track’ standard applies differently to ‘first parties,’ companies that directly face consumers, than to ‘third parties,’ those that facilitate the advertisements displayed online.”

Sen. Al Franken did his best to pin down Mark T. Bertolini, the chief executive of Aetna, and Joseph R. Swedish, the chief executive of Anthem, to commit that their companies would pass on any promised merger savings to consumers. Their answers were high comedy.