The Obama Administration has just released a draft “Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights Act of 2015.” Generally speaking, the bill aims to translate fair information practice principles (FIPPs) — which have traditionally been flexible and voluntary guidelines — into a formal set of industry best practices that would be federally enforced on private sector digital innovators. This includes federally-mandated Privacy Review Boards, approved by the Federal Trade Commission, the agency that will be primarily responsible for enforcing the new regulatory regime.
Many of the principles found in the Administration’s draft proposal are quite sensible as best practices, but the danger here is that they could soon be converted into a heavy-handed, bureaucratized regulatory regime for America’s highly innovative, data-driven economy.
No matter how well-intentioned this proposal may be, it is vital to recognize that restrictions on data collection could negatively impact innovation, consumer choice, and the competitiveness of America’s digital economy.
Online privacy and security is vitally important, but we should look to use alternative and less costly approaches to protecting privacy and security that rely on education, empowerment, and targeted enforcement of existing laws. Serious and lasting long-term privacy protection requires a layered, multifaceted approach incorporating many solutions.
That is why flexible data collection and use policies and evolving best practices will ultimately serve consumers better than one-size-fits all, top-down regulatory edicts. Instead of imposing these FIPPs in a rigid regulatory fashion, privacy and security best practices will need to evolve gradually to new marketplace realities and be applied in a more organic and flexible fashion, often outside the realm of public policy.
Regulatory approaches, like the Obama Administration’s latest proposal, will instead impose significant costs on consumers and the economy. Data is the fuel that powers our information economy. Privacy-related mandates that curtail the use of data to better target or personalize new services could raise costs for consumers. There is no free lunch. Something has to pay for all the wonderful free sites and services we enjoy today. If data can’t be used to cross-subsidize those services, prices will go up.
Data regulations could also indirectly cost consumers by diminishing the abundance of content and culture now supported by the data-driven economy. In other words, even if prices and paywalls don’t go up, quantity or quality could suffer if data collection is restricted.
Data regulations could also hurt the competitiveness of domestic markets and the global competitive advantage that America’s tech sector has in this space. That regulatory burden would fall hardest on smaller operators and new start-ups. Today’s “app economy” has given countless small innovators a chance to compete on even footing with the biggest players. Burdensome data collection restrictions could short-circuit the engine that drives entrepreneurial innovation among mom-and-pop companies if ad dollars get consolidated in the hands of only the larger companies that can afford to comply with new rules.
We don’t want to go down the path the European Union charted in the 1990s with heavy-handed data directives. That suffocated high-tech entrepreneurialism and innovation there. America’s Internet sector came to be the envy of the world because our more flexible, light-touch regulatory regime leaves more breathing room for competition and innovation compared to Europe’s top-down regime. We should not abandon that approach now.
Finally, the Obama Administration’s proposal deals exclusively with private sector data collection and has nothing to say about government surveillance activities. The Administration would be wise to channel its energies into that far more significant privacy problem first.
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Additional Reading from Adam Thierer of the Mercatus Center
Law Review Articles:
- “The Pursuit of Privacy in a World Where Information Control is Failing,” Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy, Vol. 36, No. 2, (2013).
- “A Framework for Benefit-Cost Analysis in Digital Privacy Debates,” George Mason Law Review, Vol. 20, No. 4, (2013).
- “Privacy Law’s Precautionary Principle Problem,” Maine Law Review, Vol. 66, No. 2 (2014).
- “The Internet of Things and Wearable Technology: Addressing Privacy and Security Concerns without Derailing Innovation,” Richmond Journal of Law and Technology, Vol. 21 (2015).
- “Technopanics, Threat Inflation, and the Danger of an Information Technology Precautionary Principle,” Minnesota Journal of Law, Science & Technology, Vol. 14, No. 1, (2013).
Testimony / Filings
- Testimony before the Senate Commerce Committee on the Internet of Things, February 11, 2015.
- Testimony before the Senate Commerce Committee on Privacy, Data Collection & Do Not Track, April 24, 2013.
- Filing to the Federal Trade Commission on Privacy & Security Implications of the Internet of Things, May 31, 2013.
- Filing to the Federal Trade Commission on Protecting Consumer Privacy in an Era of Rapid Change, February 22, 2011.
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