Latest in FTC
Even without Congressional action, there are structural and policy steps the FTC can undertake to increase its reach and effectiveness.
Bullish digital campaigning can’t change hearts and minds at the polls—but it can change Facebook.
The FTC’s cybersecurity enforcement program has faced increasing judicial scrutiny because of the inherent vagueness of the "reasonable" cybersecurity it seeks to require. Meanwhile, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has struggled to achieve robust private sector engagement. Linking these agencies’ programs and enforcement practices will help each solve the other’s problem.
The future of American semiconductor innovation—and the price of future smartphones—may hinge on what is happening in a San Jose courtroom. In the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, companies including Apple, Blackberry, Ericsson, Intel, LG, MediaTek, Huawei and Samsung have testified on behalf of the Federal Trade Commission’s application of traditional anti-trust concepts to rein in practices by Qualcomm that harm consumers, competition and innovation.
While the ECJ’s decision in Schrems v. Data Commissioner suggests that reforms will be necessary to save the US-EU safe harbor framework, both EU officials and U.S. privacy advocates have sometimes urged reforms without a full accounting of costs and benefits. Tim Edgar’s insights and his appreciation of the real need for reform are most valuable.
Today’s decision by the European Court of Justice on safe harbor – Maximillian Schrems v. Data Protection Commissioner, ably summarized by Lawfare’s Alex Loomis – ignores some very inconvenient truths about surveillance and privacy on both sides of the Atlantic. In this post, I explain what the ECJ ignores.
The European Court of Justice (ECJ) invalidated the principal European component of the U.S.-E.U. Safe Harbor Framework today in Schrems v. Data Protection Commissioner.
Last week, the Court of Justice for the European Union’s Advocate General published an opinion that casts doubt on the future of the so-called United States-European Union “safe harbor framework”—a legal arrangement which enables much of the U.S. tech community’s European operations. The advocate general’s opinion is not binding.
Such is the gist of a three-judge panel's quite important opinion, affirming the denial of a motion to dismiss in Federal Trade Commission v. Wyndham Worldwide Corporation et al.
Query how much this precedent, regarding the government's own cyber enforcement powers, might bolster private efforts to hold the government to account for its own data security problems.
Bitcoin and the blockchain – how do they work and what do they mean for financial and government services and for consumers? And who holds massive stores of bitcoin that can’t be spent without solving one of the great financial mysteries of our time? Our guest for episode 75 is Michael Casey, former senior columnist for the Wall Street Journal and – as of last week – senior advisor at the MIT Media Lab’s Digital Currency Initiative.