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Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Sen. Schumer, You Cannot Be Serious

by Thomas O'Toole

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 I try not to lard this blog with too much personal opinion but after reading the thousandth news article about Sen. Charles Schumer's rousing call for the Federal Trade Commission to write guidlines on privacy in social networks, I have to say, in the words of my boyhood hero John McEnroe, "You cannot be serious." Schumer is asking the FTC to do his job for him. Surely Schumer -- who has been in Congress since 1991 and in the Senate since 1999 -- knows that the FTC's authority to regulate online privacy is on very shaky and politically charged ground. At a minimum, he knows that Congress has failed to act, despite calls for federal online privacy legislation for over a decade.

(Provisions in the House financial reform bill (H.R. 4173) giving the FTC greater rulemaking and consumer protection authority are causing panic up and down K Street, and are one of the main stumbling blocks to passing the legislation. The Senate bill (S. 3217) does not contain the FTC rulemaking provisions, though it does contain language calling for a new financial consumer protection agency.)

Folks intent on prodding the FTC to "do something" about online privacy risk suffering the same fate that the Federal Communications Commission suffered on the net neutrality question: a judicial declaration that the FCC lacked authority to sanction Comcast Corp. for throttling BitTorrent traffic, in the process calling into question the agency's authority to write regulations on Internet network management issues. A lot of work went into building the FCC's house of cards in support of its net neutrality rules, and now supporters have to start all over again.

Just like net neutrality, online privacy is a thorny policy question that should be decided by Congress, however daunting a prospect that might seem.

Unfortunately, it looks like the FTC is going to take the bait.
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