FTC Commissioner Julie Brill on Online Privacy and Data Security

Over the past few years many of my clients have been involved in the digital advertising industry. When I learned that FTC Commissioner Julie Brill would be speaking at Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society I was curious to hear her thoughts on consumer protection, privacy policies and the idea of consent and the rules vs. standards approach to protecting online privacy.

She offered two recent examples of the agency’s work in protecting privacy. One involved Facebook and concerns around unannounced changes to its privacy policy that resulted the company’s failure to keep its privacy promises. Another related to deceptive practices on the part of Google around Google Buzz, and its automatically enrolling people and then exposing their most frequent email correspondents.