FTC Efforts to Strengthen Online Privacy Protections Face Hurdles

The Federal Trade Commission has outlined a far-reaching vision for protecting consumers’ privacy online, but the plan faces numerous challenges. FTC Chair Lina Khan said in an October statement on the FTC’s data strategy that she intends to explore privacy standards as she probes emerging technologies, discriminatory data practices and companies’ amassing of consumer information to cement their market power. Yet current and former FTC officials say budgetary wrangling in Congress will shape the agency’s ultimate impact on data privacy and some also caution that writing broadly defined privacy rules under a rarely used authority known as Magnuson-Moss might lead the agency into legal gray areas that could result in successful industry lawsuits. Further, Khan has introduced her approach amid a personnel shake-up that could influence potential rule-making, according to officials. “For those who say that Congress hasn’t acted, so let’s have the FTC do it, it’s an uphill climb,” said Jessica Rich, who stepped down as director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection in 2017 and now works for law firm Kelley Drye & Warren LLP. The agency is currently reviewing piecemeal data regulations authorized in specific laws, issuing an update in late October to a rule requiring financial institutions to secure customer data.