Sorry for the blank space for a few days: I've been in the northeastern U.S. but in a large forested area apparently abandoned by my very large wireless telecom provider formerly known as Ma Bell.

Last week, U.S. PIRG Media and Telecommunications Reform Attorney Amina Fazlullah joined nine other advocates in a news event demanding baseline privacy protections against widespread behavioral tracking and targeting on the Internet. Our joint release including links to materials. USA Today blog.

On Wednesday, I will join many of the same groups in a news event (advisory) to discuss Congressional and administration efforts to either enhance or diminish both on- and offline privacy. I fully expect that in every battle over privacy we will face an ugly fight over whether or not the states -- the absolute longtime privacy superstars -- can continue to lead the way, or whether the demands of corporate interests for weak, preemptive federal laws will prevail.

You know where we stand. So long as federal laws are strong enough, there is no need for the states to act, and they will not. That's not rational. But if federal laws fail to do the job, we need the states as first responders-- their rights to act should never be taken off the board. That's not rational. But it serves corporate privacy invaders well.

Last week we sent letters to the Senate and the House urging members to oppose the Wall Street bailout unless it included the key mortgage modification provision sought by all leading consumer, civil rights, community and labor groups (it didn't). As an attachment to that letter, we included U.S. PIRG’s Main Street Financial Reform Platform. In addition to listing the emergency reforms that needed to be included in the bailout (they weren't, at least not in adequate form), we laid out a five-part platform for development over the next 100 days so it could be considered in the first 100 days of the new Congress in 2009. In addition to proposing prudential regulatory reforms to prevent future fiascoes, the platform urges passage of the Consumer and Shareholders Protection Act, as proposed in 2002 as S. 3143 (his last proposal) by the late consumer champion Senator Paul Wellstone (D-MN). The proposal would establish a government-chartered, consumer-controlled organization to amplify consumer participation in government and counter the influence of the powerful special interests whose self-interested lobbying over the years contributed to the catastrophic failure of the legislative and regulatory systems to prevent this crisis. Its concept is based on that of the successful Illinois Citizen Utility Board (Illinois CUB). We'll have more on this and on the full platform in coming weeks.

Before the Free Press Media Reform conference in Memphis, we joined several other founding members of the Savetheinternet.com in signing the Internet Freedom Declaration of 2007: A Public Agenda for the Future of Communications. It expands our call for Internet freedom and net neutrality to include other goals, including a guarantee that

as the Internet becomes our public square and economic marketplace, Internet access must be regarded as a civil right for all Americans...Broadband Internet access should be universally available and affordable. Rural or urban, rich or poor, every American must be able to access the information superhighway at fair prices and speeds that rival the rest of the world.

I'm just back from speaking at the annual convention of the National Association of State Legislatures (NCSL) at Opryland outside Nashville, Tennessee. It's not over yet; and the state PIRGs and our affiliated state environmental groups still have a large delegation there. And if you are still there, today Thursday at 3:30 PM Nashville time, at the Opry Mills Regal Theatre with co-sponsorship from Paramount Classics Pictures, the state PIRGs are screening An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore's award-winning global warming warning first seen at Sundance this year. MORE:

I spoke on a panel on Credit Reports and Credit Scores (my outline) on a variety of issues, but primarily in opposition to the use of credit scores for insurance purposes. We recommend a ban in our PIRG/Consumers Union model state credit and identity theft law because your credit score is based on your error-ridden credit report, your credit score has no actuarial relationship to your ability to drive a car or your propensity (if any!) to burn or down or trash your house and, worst, insurance companies may be using credit scoring as a proxy for race, an otherwise illegal rating factor.

I also attended a fine workshop featuring two of the nation's academic experts on and opponents of state preemption. Law Professor Tom McGarity of the University of Texas is also President of the Center for Progressive Reform. I'm looking forward to his book on the preemption threat, due out next year. Professor Carl Stenberg of the University of North Carolina is co-author of Beyond Preemption: Intergovernmental Partnerships to Enhance the New Economy from the National Academy of Public Administration.

AP reports in the Washington Post (free registration required) that a Texas jury has awarded $253 million to the widow of a "man who took the once-popular painkiller Vioxx." Here's a link to PIRG's Drug Safety page, where we are urging passage of an FDA reform bill, S 930 (Grassley-R-IA, Dodd-D-CT) to force the agency to do a better job. Currently, the FDA is extremely limited in its ability to both identify dangerous drugs and inform doctors and consumers about drug related health risks.