Online privacy

If the American people and Congress are looking to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for leadership in the protection of personal privacy, they should prepare for disappointment. In a recent filing with the Commerce Department’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration, the FTC walked away from giving consumers meaningful control of their private information. The bromides they espoused sound remarkably similar to the arguments of the companies that routinely exploit our privacy.

Federal Trade Commission Chairman Joseph Simons told the Senate Consumer Protection Subcommittee at an FTC oversight hearing that the FTC needs three things to protect consumer privacy: 1) rulemaking authority; 2) civil penalty authority—currently it can only try and make consumers whole for losses, not penalize the conduct responsible; and 3) jurisdiction over nonprofits and common carriers. Currently, the FTC has to sue or settle with alleged violators, then monitor enforcement of the settlements it secures.

A Q&A with Rep Ro Khanna (D-CA), who represents the CA district that houses the Apple and Google campuses and who has put forth a set of principles called the "Internet Bill of Rights".

Consumer agencies in the Netherlands, Poland and five other European Union countries asked privacy regulators to take action against Google for allegedly tracking the movements of millions of users in breach of the bloc’s new privacy law.  Google is already facing a lawsuit in the United States for allegedly tracking phone users regardless of privacy settings. The consumer groups, which included those in the Czech Republic, Greece, Norway, Slovenia and Sweden, filed complaints with their respective national data protection authorities, based on research by their Norwegian counterpart.

What does the Federal Trade Commission need to grapple with a force like Facebook?

Staff from the Federal Trade Commission responded to the Department of Commerce, National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) Request for Comment on “Developing the Administration’s Approach to Consumer Privacy.” The comments outline the agency’s experience protecting consumers’ privacy through enforcement, education, and policy work.

A coalition of Facebook critics has filed a complaint against the company with the Federal Trade Commission, asking the agency to investigate 2018’s breach of 30 million user accounts. In Sept, the company first announced that 50 million users had their accounts improperly accessed because of a flaw in a Facebook feature, but it later revised the figure down. The company said hackers accessed data ranging from basic contact information to more sensitive information, like demographics and recent searches.

Our 2019 policy priorities lay out a proactive agenda for the new year and the new Congress, to move us closer to building media and communications systems that empower everyone to connect and communicate freely and safely. We’ve identified four major priorities:

Thanks to Cambridge Analytica and other scandals, the federal government is now discussing tech platform privacy issues more than ever. But localities—most recently, New York City—have been stepping in to try to fill the broadband privacy gap. Other local officials should look to New York City as a model for their own legislation or rules, and the public should be pushing their local representatives to protect broadband privacy.

In just over a decade, Facebook has connected more than 2.2 billion people, a global nation unto itself that reshaped political campaigns, the advertising business and daily life around the world. Along the way, Facebook accumulated one of the largest-ever repositories of personal data, a treasure trove of photos, messages and likes that propelled the company into the Fortune 500.