Comment Neelie (Kroes)

[...] And third, what can be done without consent should be limited; and justifiable, in the light of the standard's overall aim. But the exceptions now on the table seem extremely broad. Jon Leibowitz, the FTC's Chairman, called them "a loophole you could drive a virtual truck through". And you can see why. Take the exception discussed for "market research". We need to be clearer, much clearer, about what that means, and how far it goes. Of course anonymisation, or privacy safeguards like retention limits, could mitigate here. But this cannot be an open-ended "get-out clause".