Yesterday the FTC released the long-awaited Final Report on
privacy entitled “Protecting Consumer Privacy in an Era of Rapid Change.” This
report follows on to the FTC Staff Report released in December 2010 on the
subject. CCIA filed response comments last year. The new report
follows on, to a large degree, with comments that the FTC has been making about
consumer privacy for the past few years, reiterating a number of key points,
such as support for legislation, privacy by design, and Do Not Track. There are
a couple points that are worth highlighting for further study, however.
First, CCIA is happy to note that the FTC continues to see the importance in
balancing the important goal of protecting consumer privacy with the equally
important goal of maintaining and encouraging an innovative market in online
services. The applications and services that users have engaged with to
educate, entertain, and communicate are the products of innovative developers
and companies, and their features are often only made possible by collecting and
analyzing data.
We also agree with the FTC when they raise concerns over what they refer to as “Large
Platform Providers” that, due to their position, have access to the entirety of
a user’s Internet browsing activities. The FTC gives as an example Internet
Service Providers, which is an example that CCIA has often used in the past.
The FTC, however, also places operating systems, browsers, and social media
platforms, which we view with less suspicion. While technologically those
platforms offer the same opportunities as that of an ISP, changing a browser because
of a privacy concern is much easier than changing an ISP: There is little to no
cost (either monetarily or socially) to doing so, and there are plenty of
alternatives to choose from. Neither can be said of ISPs. The FTC announced its
intention to host a public workshop later in 2012 to explore these issues, and
CCIA will follow the discussions closely.
