Facebook Data Scandals Stoke Criticism That a Privacy Watchdog Too Rarely Bites

Spring 2018, soon after Facebook acknowledged that the data of tens of millions of its users had improperly been obtained by the political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, a top enforcement official at the Federal Trade Commission drafted a memo about the prospect of disciplining the social network. Lawmakers, consumer advocates and even former commission officials were clamoring for tough action against Facebook, arguing that it had violated an earlier Federal Trade Commission consent decree barring it from misleading users about how their information was shared. But the enforcement official, James A. Kohm, took a different view. In a previously undisclosed memo in March, Kohm — echoing Facebook’s own argument — cautioned that Facebook was not responsible for the consulting firm’s reported abuses. The social network seemed to have taken reasonable steps to address the problem, he wrote, according to someone who read the memo, and most likely had not broken its promises to the FTC.

In more than 40 interviews, former and current FTC officials, lawmakers, Capitol Hill staff members, and consumer advocates said that as evidence of abuses has piled up against tech companies, the FTC has been too cautious. Now, as the Trump administration and Congress debate whether to expand the agency and its authority over privacy violations, the Facebook inquiry looms as a referendum on the FTC’s future.