On June 3, 2010, FTC BCP Director David Vladeck spoke at the Privacy Law Scholars Conference in Washington, DC. His remarks focused on the issue of privacy and technology. In the 1890’s, Vladeck noted, Louis Brandeis and Samuel Warren wrote about their concerns with the invasiveness of a new technology, the camera. Since that time, we have grappled with the impacts of more and more invasive technology on privacy. Vladeck discussed new technological information practices and the privacy risks they pose. The FTC, he noted, is trying to “address these risks [through policy development and enforcement.] without stifling the dramatic benefits of technological innovation.”
With respect to policy development, Vladeck offered several key messages from roundtables and public discussions: (1) given the volume of information maintained about consumers, it “no longer makes sense to talk about ‘personal information’ and ‘non-personal information’”; (2) because it is now more expensive to destroy than to keep data, data will likely “hang around long enough that it is re-examined and re-purposed for uses that may not have been contemplated at the point of collection”; (3) consumers are still getting up to speed about how information is handled and with whom it is shared; (4) privacy policies, while useful to promote business accountability, are not useful to consumers because they are not located where “consumers need them and they’re too complicated, too vague, and too long.” Vladeck discussed the effort led by a non-profit think tank, the Future of Privacy Forum, along with marketing company WPP, to develop an icon to notify consumers how to make choices about use of their information in behavioral targeting.
With respect to enforcement, Vladeck indicated that a number of non-public investigations are ongoing, including efforts by the FTC to investigate companies in order to determine whether actions are necessary in new technology areas, such as P2P file sharing software. Finally, he discussed the contribution of academic research. As an example, he discussed the assistance academics from the University of Texas made to an investigation FTC conducted of Netflix’s release of “anonymized” movie queue information. The professors made the FTC aware that it was possible to re-identify individuals using the data set. As a result, Netflix agreed to modify its practice.
In the same vein, an FTC representative spoke at a Calgary, Alberta event put on by Canada’s privacy commissioner. The representative’s remarks, reflected frustration with current U.S. privacy laws, including an indictment that they “[aren’t] working,” in particular because “’[w]e’ve put too much burden on the consumers to understand [privacy] policies.’” No one should be surprised to see more FTC enforcement and regulation efforts in this area.
