The Wall Street Journal is preparing a report to outline its privacy policy goals, with a new position created to oversee privacy efforts.

While it's unclear what issues new regulations would address and what role a privacy watchdog would have, some observers cheered a new focus on privacy from the Obama administration.

"Better late than never," U.S. Representative Joe Barton, a Texas Republican and cochairman of the Congressional Privacy Caucus, said in a statement. "Neither the government nor the industry are doing enough to protect people's privacy, but the Department of Commerce's decision to step up may shine some light on practices that seem to thrive in the dark. I am glad more and more folks -- in the government and otherwise -- are beginning to realize that there is a war against privacy."

But critics pointed to a couple of potential problems, including questions about whether new privacy regulations are needed and about potential conflicts with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, an independent agency that now holds U.S. companies to their privacy promises. FTC officials have been in recent months.

Privacy groups and some tech companies have been pushing for stronger laws for years, but there's "an absence of any real data and very little analysis" of the costs of new regulations, said Thomas Lenard, president of the Technology Policy Institute, a free-market think tank.