Redl, FTC's Phillips Warn Against Anti-Innovation Privacy Regime
FTC Commissioner Noah Phillips warned against privacy regulation further solidifying dominance of large tech companies like Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google. NTIA Administrator David Redl also at the Internet Governance Forum USA Friday said the U.S. government “must continue to give a green light to innovators."
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The new GOP FTC member quoted Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg telling Congress in April that he’s open to more regulation but that it “puts in place rules that a company that is larger, that has resources like ours, can easily comply with.” Phillips cited similar comments from FTC Chairman Joe Simons before the House Digital Commerce Committee (see 1807180051). Phillips quoted Zuckerberg a second time saying the alternative to U.S. tech dominance is Chinese companies, which don’t share American values.
NTIA is collaborating with the Commerce Department’s International Trade Administration and the National Institute of Standards and Technology to “identify common ground and formulate core, high-level principles on data privacy,” said Redl. The FTC’s upcoming hearings on competition and consumer protection “should help further illuminate these issues,” said Redl: “Industry is looking to the administration to demonstrate leadership on this issue -- they’re rightfully concerned about the potential for a fractured and stifling regulatory landscape.”
Asked if the White House plans to directly weigh in on data privacy, Redl said the Commerce Department is working with industry stakeholders to finalize a list of principles reflecting how the “U.S. feels about privacy” and how to balance “innovation and prosperity” with personal beliefs about privacy. “We’re honestly working with our colleagues in the White House,” and NTIA will continue to engage industry stakeholders, he said.
NTIA advocates for “increased diversity, accountability and transparency within ICANN,” said Redl, and the agency plans to issue recommendations to the organization's board later this year. ICANN’s “most pressing issue,” said Redl, is updating its Whois (see 1807170001) service to comply with the EU’s general data protection regulation. Redl called the EU’s decision to stop collecting and distributing domain name registration data (see 1807200039) “an unmitigated victory for the spammers and scammers that plague consumers and businesses.” The agency and high-ranking U.S. officials are engaging the European Data Protection Board, the European Commission and European member states, said Redl.
Phillips said the early signs of the GDPR “point to precisely the effects on competition that I fear. ... Resources devoted to [GDPR] compliance can be scaled, and could have been spent on innovation, wages, and so on.” The U.S. is still learning about the GDPR's impacts, he said, but “about the American risk-based approach, however, we can say one thing for certain already: It has both targeted the areas of greatest privacy need and still permitted a tremendous amount of innovation.” He asked if the U.S. privacy regime is “willing to allow a reduction in competition or innovation.”
NetChoice Vice President Carl Szabo said managing content isn’t about the First Amendment, which bars the government, not a private entity, from censoring free speech. Facebook Content Policy Manager Kaitlin Sullivan outlined three principles the company adheres to when moderating content: safety, free speech and fair application. Facebook has an obligation to ensure users are safe, said Sullivan. The platform highly values freedom of expression, removing speech should be a last resort, and policies should apply fairly across the world for all groups, she said.