Online privacy

I believe we need a more active role for governments and regulators. By updating the rules for the Internet, we can preserve what’s best about it — the freedom for people to express themselves and for entrepreneurs to build new things — while also protecting society from broader harms. From what I’ve learned, I believe we need new regulation in four areas: harmful content, election integrity, privacy and data portability.

Significant broadband policy continues to take shape: the Save the Internet Act advanced to the full House Committee on Energy & Commerce, the Federal Trade Commission launched a study into the privacy practices of internet service providers, and the Federal Communications Commission circulated a proposal to cap the Universal Service Fund. We take a look at what you may have missed this week.

[Prepared statement before the House Economic and Consumer Policy Subcommittee]

The Federal Trade Commission issued orders to seven US Internet broadband providers and related entities seeking information the agency will use to examine how broadband companies collect, retain, use, and disclose information about consumers and their devices. The orders seek information about the companies’ privacy policies, procedures, and practices. The orders were sent to: AT&T, AT&T Mobility, Comcast Cable Communications doing business as Xfinity, Google Fiber, T-Mobile, Verizon, and Cellco Partnership doing business as Verizon Wireless.

On March 12, Utah legislators voted unanimously to pass landmark legislation in support of a new privacy law that will protect private electronic data stored with third parties like Google or Facebook from free-range government access.

Facebook knew about Cambridge Analytica’s “improper data-gathering practices” months before the Guardian first reported on them in Dec 2015, according to a court filing by the attorney general for Washington DC. The new information “could suggest that Facebook has consistently mislead [sic]” British lawmakers “about what it knew and when about Cambridge Analytica”, tweeted Damian Collins, the chair of the House of Commons digital culture media and sport select committee (DCMS) in response to the filing.

According to a series of letters from Federal Trade Commission Chairman Joe Simons to US senators, the agency is planning to launch a wide-ranging study of tech companies' data practices. He wrote that the FTC is planning to conduct a so-called 6(b) study, which the agency has previously applied to data brokers and businesses accused of abusing the federal patent system. He suggested the study would target large tech firms but didn't specifically name companies like Google, Facebook or Amazon.

House Commerce Committee Chairman Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ) and Consumer Protection Subcommittee Chair Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) wrote to the Federal Trade Commission asking how it would use additional resources to protect consumer privacy and increase data security enforcement activity. The Committee leaders asked how the FTC would deploy resources under three different scenarios – if it received an additional $50, $75 or $100 million for consumer protection and privacy. Chairmen Pallone and Schakowsky requested responses from the FTC to a series of questions by April 3, 2019, including:

After each misdeed becomes public, Facebook alternates between denial, hollow promises and apology campaigns. As chairman of the House Subcommittee on Antitrust, Commercial and Administrative Law, I am calling for an investigation into whether Facebook’s conduct has violated antitrust laws. Since the Cambridge Analytica scandal, the Federal Trade Commission has confirmed that it is investigating Facebook to determine whether it violated a consent order it entered into with the commission in 2011.