Tomorrow morning at 10:00 a.m. EST, the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation will hold a hearing on “The State of Online Consumer Privacy.” West Virginia Democratic Senator Jay Rockefeller IV is Chairman of the committee.

According to an official press release, ”the hearing will kick off the 112th Congress’ deliberations on consumer privacy, an issue that is front and center on the Commerce Committee’s agenda, and a top priority for Chairman Rockefeller.”

Quoting the rest of the release:

“Modern technology has connected people with the world and led to new innovations, new products and new experiences,” Chairman Rockefeller said. “But with these new opportunities come new risks. I want to know if the privacy protections we have in place are enough, or whether Congress needs to step in and do more. As Chairman, I’m committed to doing everything I can to protect consumers’ privacy.”

Wednesday’s hearing will examine commercial practices that involve collecting, maintaining, using, and disseminating large amounts of consumer information, some of it potentially very sensitive and private in nature. It comes on the heels of two new reports by the Federal Trade Commission and the U.S. Department of Commerce calling for greater privacy protections for Americans online.

Chairman Rockefeller has spearheaded Senate efforts to protect consumers’ privacy in our increasingly online world.  This is the 2nd in a continued series of hearings examining how users’ information is stored, collected and used and what more Congress can do to protect Americans online.

A number of privacy experts are scheduled to testify before the panel including Jon D. Leibowitz, the Chairman of the Federal Trade Commission, whose organization would play a large role in enforcing any privacy legislation that Congress passes.

And legislation is certainly on the agenda. According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Lawrence E. Strickling, Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Communications and Information, National Telecommunications and Information Administration, is expected to ask Congress to “pass a ‘privacy bill of rights’ to protect Americans, amid growing concern about the tracking of Internet users.” A Commerce Department source also said, “the administration will also call for consumers to have a right to access information about them and a right to have the information stored securely” during the panel.

The Commerce Department first proposed the idea of a “privacy bill of rights” in a special green paper report in December. At the time, the Commerce Department asked for feedback on the report from privacy experts, consumer advocates, and businesses. In response, Reputation.com CEO Michael Fertik drafted an analysis of the report and submitted it in January of this year. In our report, Reputation.com focused on the importance of baseline consumer privacy protections and the role that private companies can have in spurring the economy by delivering consumer privacy services.

We will be following the senate hearing closely tomorrow, and we encourage you to do the same via Twitter. We will also offer a more detailed recap of the panel, as well as a round-up of some of the press coverage surrounding the event, later in the day here at the Reputation.com Blog.