FTC’S Ohlhausen Warns against Baseline Privacy Law; Supports Self-Regulation

In a recent speech to about 100 attendees at the Digital Advertising Alliance’s (“DAA”) first summit in Washington, Federal Trade Commissioner, Maureen Ohlhausen, reaffirmed her position that the FTC’s 2012 privacy recommendations could unintentionally disadvantage smaller online ad companies. The FTC report, Protecting Consumer Privacy in an Era of Rapid Change, was issued last year, prior to her being sworn in as Commissioner. It discussed the issue of privacy concerns online in regards to behavioral advertising and called on the Industry to develop a universal do-not-track tool that will allow consumers to easily opt out of all online behavioral advertising. "I do not agree with everything in the FTC's report that calls for baseline privacy legislation," Ohlhausen said. “New privacy restrictions may have an effect on competition by favoring entrenched entities that already have information, over new entities,” she added.