Though details “are not yet clear” for President...
Though details “are not yet clear” for President Barack Obama’s forthcoming executive order on privacy concerns about commercial drones, it’s expected to “task” the NTIA with convening a multistakeholder process to develop privacy guidelines, “likely either in the form of…
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best practices or a voluntary code of conduct,” said Wiley Rein lawyers Kathleen Kirby and Ari Meltzer in a blog post Friday (http://bit.ly/1poKN4V). “Best practices generally are not enforceable,” they said. “A voluntary code of conduct, however, is legally enforceable against companies that affirmatively commit to follow it. While the decision to adopt a code of conduct is voluntary, a public pledge to follow the code generally would amount to a representation enforceable by the FTC under its consumer protection authority.” There are incentives to adopting voluntary codes of conduct, as NTIA has done in its previous proceedings, they said. “Companies build consumer trust by engaging with consumers and other stakeholders in multi-stakeholder processes and by adopting privacy codes of conduct developed during those discussions,” they said. “Enforceable codes of conduct provide the public clear, understandable baseline protections and offer businesses greater certainty about how agreed upon privacy principles apply to them. Indeed, in any enforcement action based on conduct covered by a code, the FTC likely would consider a company’s adherence to such a code favorably. In the absence of a generally agreed upon code of conduct, the FTC could enforce privacy guidelines on a case-by-case basis, with less predictability and thus greater risk for businesses."