FTC Chairman Maureen Ohlhausen

Federal Trade Commission Acting Chairman Maureen K. Ohlhausen released a summary of the agency’s major accomplishments one year after being named to lead the agency.

Among the accomplishments:

I am pleased to see progress on this important matter. The Federal Trade Commission has long applied its competition and consumer protection expertise to network neutrality issues. The FTC also participated in the Federal Communications Commission’s proceeding, and I am gratified that my comments and those of FTC staff appear to have been taken into consideration in the development of this order. I look forward to reading the full draft order.

[Commentary] Let’s set the record straight: First, despite hyperventilating headlines, Internet service providers have never planned to sell your individual browsing history to third parties. That’s simply not how online advertising works. And doing so would violate ISPs’ privacy promises. Second, Congress’s decision last week didn’t remove existing privacy protections; it simply cleared the way for us to work together to reinstate a rational and effective system for protecting consumer privacy. We need to put the nation’s most experienced and expert privacy cop back on the beat, and we need to end the uncertainty and confusion that was created in 2015 when the Federal Communications Commission intruded in this space. The Obama Administration fractured our nation’s online privacy law, and it is our job to fix it. We pledge to the American people that we will do just that.

The Federal Communications Commission and the Federal Trade Commission are committed to protecting the online privacy of American consumers.

We believe that the best way to do that is through a comprehensive and consistent framework. After all, Americans care about the overall privacy of their information when they use the Internet, and they shouldn’t have to be lawyers or engineers to figure out if their information is protected differently depending on which part of the Internet holds it. That’s why we disagreed with the FCC’s unilateral decision in 2015 to strip the FTC of its authority over broadband providers’ privacy and data security practices, removing an effective cop from the beat. The FTC has a long track record of protecting consumers’ privacy and security throughout the Internet ecosystem. It did not serve consumers’ interests to abandon this longstanding, bipartisan, successful approach. We still believe that jurisdiction over broadband providers’ privacy and data security practices should be returned to the FTC, the nation’s expert agency with respect to these important subjects. All actors in the online space should be subject to the same rules, enforced by the same agency. Until that happens, however, we will work together on harmonizing the FCC’s privacy rules for broadband providers with the FTC’s standards for other companies in the digital economy.

Accordingly, the FCC today stayed one of its rules before it could take effect on March 2. This rule is not consistent with the FTC’s privacy framework. The stay will remain in place only until the FCC is able to rule on a petition for reconsideration of its privacy rules. Two years after the FCC stripped broadband consumers of FTC privacy protections, some now express concern that the temporary delay of a rule not yet in effect will leave consumers unprotected. We agree that it is vital to fill the consumer protection gap created by the FCC in 2015, and today’s action is a step toward properly filling that gap. How that gap is filled matters. It does not serve consumers’ interests to create two distinct frameworks—one for Internet service providers and one for all other online companies. The federal government shouldn’t favor one set of companies over another—and certainly not when it comes to a marketplace as dynamic as the Internet.

So going forward, we will work together to establish a technology-neutral privacy framework for the online world. Such a uniform approach is in the best interests of consumers and has a long track record of success.