Barton: Next Congress will address online privacy

Rep. Joe Barton (R-Texas), ranking member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said on Wednesday that online privacy legislation will remain a priority when the GOP assumes the majority in the House.

"In the next Congress, the Energy and Commerce Committee and our subcommittees are going to put Internet privacy policies in the crosshair," he said in a statement.

The privacy bills drafted this session have been largely Democratic efforts, but Barton's comment suggests the issue will not disappear as Rebublicans take control.

The comments came after Facebook responded to a letter from Barton and Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass) about online privacy issues. Markey also said he will keep working on the issue.

"With privacy legislation under consideration by the Energy and Commerce Committee, I will continue to work with my colleagues to ensure that Facebook personal user data isn’t siphoned off and sold to a data broker who cannot be unfriended,” he said.

Facebook has said it did not sell user data. Rather, third party applications shared a limited amount of user information with marketers.

Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes responded to the remarks on Wednesday.

"We were happy to provide Reps. Markey and Barton with answers to any questions they had and look forward to working with them in the future. Facebook has never sold and will never sell user information," he said.

"We also have zero tolerance for data brokers because they undermine the value that users have come to expect from Facebook," he said. "To restate our policy, developers may not pass any data from Facebook to data brokers, and we are now including anonymous identifiers in this protected category of Facebook data."