Federal Trade Commission Expected to Launch Effort to Expand Online Privacy Protection

Apparently, the Federal Trade Commission is expected to begin writing federal rules to expand online privacy protections as soon as August 11. If adopted, the rules could impose significant new responsibilities on businesses that handle consumer data, including potentially barring certain kinds of data collection practices. The new FTC rules could take years to enact, and the commission could follow several different paths. One option would be to declare certain data collection practices unfair or deceptive, using its authority to police such conduct. The agency could also tap a less-used legal authority that empowers it to go after what it considers unfair methods of competition, perhaps by viewing certain businesses’ data-collection practices as exclusionary. A third option could focus on addressing privacy protection for children, with the FTC updating its rules under the 1998 Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. And it could use its enforcement powers to target individual companies, as some privacy advocates urge.