Chairman Rockefeller encourages FTC to crack down on Facebook

During a nomination hearing he chaired, Sen Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) encouraged Federal Trade Commission Chairman Jon Leibowitz to crackdown on Facebook for allegedly misleading users about its privacy policy.

Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Rockefeller acknowledged that Chairman Leibowitz would not be able to respond because of his agency's policy against discussing ongoing investigations. "So that leaves me more time to say what I feel," Chairman Rockefeller said. He said that any action the FTC takes against Facebook should require Facebook to obtain its users' consent before changing any policies and should set up a "rigorous enforcement regime." Later in the hearing, Chairman Rockefeller said he watched Charlie Rose's interview of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg and chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg. He said the Facebook executives acted like "the world is ours" and "we are the future" but that no "sense of restraint" or "collateral damage… was brought up." Facebook spokesman Andrew Noyes said he could not comment on any possible settlement with the FTC, but he pointed to references in the transcript of the Charlie Rose interview in which Sandberg and Zuckerberg discussed their views of privacy.

Chairman Leibowitz tried to assure Republican and Democratic legislators alike that when the final voluntary recommendations from the commission are released on food marketing to kids, they will be balanced, modified from the earlier draft, totally voluntary and essentially unenforceable. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-TX) expressed the most concern about the proposed food marketing guidelines, whose original draft drew heavy fire from ad agencies for being overly restrictive. Sen Hutchison pointed out that some of the foods--yogurt and 2% milk--whose marketing the guidelines suggested could be restricted, were on the list of foods approved by the Departments of Health and Human Services and Agriculture in their 2010 dietary guidelines. Chairman Leibowitz said he hoped to get the FTC's final recommendations out soon, but said they were only that. He pointed out that the FTC's portion of the interagency working group recommendations were focused on marketing, not dietary guidelines, and that he, too, was surprised when he learned that his daughter's breakfast of Special K and yogurt would not pass muster. As he has said before, the guidelines have been modified to reflect stakeholder input, including recommending that they apply to 2-to-11-year-olds, rather than extending them to up to 17-year-olds.