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The Federal Trade Commission has announced that it will consider rules to eliminate “harmful commercial surveillance and lax data security.” The Advanced Notice of Proposed Rulemaking comes even as Congress works on the American Data Protection and Privacy Act (ADDPA) which, if passed, would be enforced by the FTC.
Commercial surveillance is defined as the “business of collecting, analyzing, and profiting from information about people” — a definition as wide as anything contemplated by the ADPPA.
The FTC’s perspective. FTC Chair Linda M. Chan said in a statement: “Firms now collect personal data on individuals at a massive scale and in a stunning array of contexts. The growing digitization of our economy — coupled with business models that can incentivize endless hoovering up of sensitive user data and a vast expansion of how this data is used — means that potentially unlawful practices may be prevalent.”
The FTC has authority to bring enforcement actions against unlawful data practices under the FTC Act, the agency said. However, this jurisdiction lacks teeth because of the limited authority to impose financial penalties. “By contrast,” the FTC said, “rules that establish clear privacy and data security requirements across the board and provide the Commission the authority to seek financial penalties for first-time violations could incentivize all companies to invest more consistently in compliant practices.”
Read next: 3 things to know about the American Data Protection and Privacy Act
Adtech responds. “Unfettered collection and monetization of user data has allowed the big tech firms
Read more here: https://martech.org/the-ftc-weighs-in-on-customer-data-privacy/