Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.) sent a letter Wednesday to Apple and Google saying he wants the companies to have privacy policies for all apps sold for their smartphones. This comes after some hoopla over whether and under what circumstances our smartphones track what we do on and where we go with our devices. Sen. Franken is Chairman of the Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology, and the Law. He held a hearing on this issue earlier this month. In the letter he sent yesterday, Sen. Franken said
“Requiring that each app in your stores have a clear, understandable privacy policy would not resolve most of the privacy concerns in the mobile market. But it would be a simple first step that would provide users, privacy advocates and federal consumer protection authorities a minimum of information about what information an app will access and who that app will share that information with third parties.”