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IDG News Service - Two U.S. lawmakers have released a draft bill that would require companies that collect personal information from customers to disclose how they collect and share that information, but several privacy and consumer groups said the proposal would legalize current privacy violations online.

The draft legislation, released Tuesday by Representatives Rick Boucher, a Virginia Democrat, and Cliff Stearns, a Florida Republican, would apply to information collected online and off.

The bill would require companies collecting personal information to allow customers to opt out of the collection, and would require companies to get permission before sharing customers' personal information with third parties.

"Our legislation confers privacy rights on individuals, informing them of the personal information that is collected and shared about them and giving them greater control over the collection, use and sharing of that information," said Boucher, chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee's Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet, in a statement.

"Our goal is to encourage greater levels of electronic commerce by providing to Internet users the assurance that their experience online will be more secure," Boucher said.

But several privacy and consumer groups, including the Consumer Federation of America, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Electronic Privacy Information Center, criticized the bill, saying it would codify current online privacy practices that exist more for the benefit of companies than customers.

"No bill would be better than this bill," Evan Hendricks, editor and publisher of the Privacy Times newsletter, said during a press conference.

The bill would put into law a weak privacy practice pervasive online today that allows companies to collect personal data if they give notice and, in some cases, get consent, added John Simpson, director of the Google privacy and accountability project at Consumer Watchdog.

"I can't really say very much good about it," he said. "This bill really adopts a bankrupt notice-and-consent regime that we all know does not work."

The consumer and privacy groups also complained that the bill would prohibit states from passing their own online privacy bills, prevent individual consumers from filing lawsuits against companies that don't protect privacy, and allow companies to keep personal information for up to 18 months.

"Please explain why a marketer would need to keep your information for 18 months," said Michelle De Mooy, senior associate for national priorities with Consumer Action.

Consumer Action praised the lawmakers for taking a first step toward a privacy bill. "But this bill is not the answer," De Mooy added. "Consumers are getting angrier and angrier, and we hear from them all the time about companies hiding under privacy policies to get to their personal information."