Commissioner Wright Will Be Missed at the FTC

[Commentary] Commissioner Joshua D. Wright left the Federal Trade Commission to return to his faculty position at George Mason University. Commissioner Wright was one of two Republican commissioners and, in his almost three-year tenure at the FTC, Commissioner Wright focused mostly on the FTC’s antitrust responsibilities. That being the case, should the privacy community care about Commissioner Wright’s departure? I think so.

Many privacy advocates have criticized what they see as Commissioner Wright’s overly empirical, economically driven approach to privacy and other consumer protection matters. Admittedly, privacy related harms do not always lend themselves to an evaluation of dollars lost or an empirical comparison of consumers’ privacy rights with other benefits gained from a company’s product or practice. Despite this criticism, Commissioner Wright contributed mightily to efforts to assure that the FTC used its deception and unfairness powers to protect privacy in a fact-based, disciplined manner that took into account the nature and degree of consumer harm compared to the consumer and economic benefit.

[Robert R. Belair is managing Partner of Arnall Golden Gregory LLP's DC office. Maayan Lattin is an Associate in the Privacy, Consumer Regulatory and Government Regulatory Practices at AGG]