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Some background on broadband privacy changes

by on March 29, 2017 · 3 comments

Congress passed joint resolutions to rescind FCC online privacy regulations this week, which President Trump is expected to sign. Ignore the hyperbole. Lawmakers are simply attempting to maintain the state of Internet privacy law that’s existed for 20-plus years.

Since the Internet was commercialized in the 1990s, the Federal Trade Commission has used its authority to prevent “unfair or deceptive acts or practices” to prevent privacy abuses by Web companies and ISPs. In 2015, that changed. The Obama FCC classified “broadband Internet access service” as a common carrier service, thereby blocking the FTC’s authority to determine which ISP privacy policies and practices are acceptable.

Privacy advocates failed to convince the Obama FTC that de-identified browsing history is “sensitive” data. (The FTC has treated SSNs, medical information, financial information, precise location, etc. as “sensitive” for years and companies must handle these differently.) The FCC was the next best thing and in 2016 they convinced the FCC to say that browsing history is “sensitive data,” but it’s sensitive only when ISPs have it.

This has contributed to a regulatory mess for consumers and tech companies. Technological convergence is here. Regulatory convergence is not.

Consider a plausible scenario. I start watching an NFL game via Twitter on my tablet on Starbucks’ wifi. I head home at halftime and watch the game from my cable TV provider, Comcast. Then I climb into bed and watch overtime on my smartphone via NFL Mobile from Verizon.

One TV program, three privacy regimes. FTC guidelines cover me at Starbucks. Privacy rules from Title VI of the Communications Act cover my TV viewing. The brand-new FCC broadband privacy rules cover my NFL Mobile viewing and late-night browsing.

Other absurdities result from the FCC’s decision to regulate Internet privacy. For instance, if you bought your child a mobile plan with web filtering, she’s protected by FTC privacy standards, while your mobile plan is governed by FCC rules. Google Fiber customers are covered by FTC policies when they use Google Search but FCC policies when they use Yelp.

This Swiss-cheese approach to classifying services means that regulatory obligations fall haphazardly across services and technologies. It’s confusing to consumers and to companies, who need to write privacy policies based on artificial FCC distinctions that consumers disregard.

The House and Senate bills rescind the FCC “notice and choice” rules, which is the first step to restoring FTC authority. (In the meantime, the FCC will implement FTC-like policies.) 

Considering that these notice and choice rules have not even gone into effect, the rehearsed outrage from advocates demands explanation:  The theatrics this week are not really about congressional repeal of the (inoperative) privacy rules. Two years ago the FCC decided to regulate the Internet in order to shape Internet services and content. The leading advocates are outraged because FCC control of the Internet is slipping away. Hopefully Congress and the FCC will eliminate the rest of the Title II baggage this year.

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Innovation Arbitrage, Technological Civil Disobedience & Spontaneous Deregulation

by on December 5, 2016 · 3 comments

The future of emerging technology policy will be influenced increasingly by the interplay of three interrelated trends: “innovation arbitrage,” “technological civil disobedience,” and “spontaneous private deregulation.” Those terms can be briefly defined as follows:

  • “Innovation arbitrage” refers to the idea that innovators can, and will with increasingly regularity, move to those jurisdictions that provide a legal and regulatory environment more hospitable to entrepreneurial activity. Just as capital now fluidly moves around the globe seeking out more friendly regulatory treatment, the same is increasingly true for innovations. And this will also play out domestically as innovators seek to play state and local governments off each other in search of some sort of competitive advantage.
  • “Technological civil disobedience” represents the refusal of innovators (individuals, groups, or even corporations) or consumers to obey technology-specific laws or regulations because they find them offensive, confusing, time-consuming, expensive, or perhaps just annoying and irrelevant. New technological devices and platforms are making it easier than ever for the public to openly defy (or perhaps just ignore) rules that limit their freedom to create or use modern technologies.
  • “Spontaneous private deregulation” can be thought of as de facto rather than the de jure elimination of traditional laws and regulations owing to a combination of rapid technological change as well the potential threat of innovation arbitrage and technological civil disobedience. In other words, many laws and regulations aren’t being formally removed from the books, but they are being made largely irrelevant by some combination of those factors. “Benign or otherwise, spontaneous deregulation is happening increasingly rapidly and in ever more industries,” noted Benjamin Edelman and Damien Geradin in a Harvard Business Review article on the phenomenon.[1]

I have previously documented examples of these trends in action for technology sectors as varied as drones, driverless cars, genetic testing, Bitcoin, and the sharing economy. (For example, on the theme of global innovation arbitrage, see all these various essays. And on the growth of technological civil disobedience, see, “DOT’s Driverless Cars Guidance: Will ‘Agency Threats’ Rule the Future?” and “Quick Thoughts on FAA’s Proposed Drone Registration System.” I also discuss some of these issues in the second edition of my Permissionless Innovation book.)

In this essay, I want to briefly highlight how, over the course of just the past month, a single company has offered us a powerful example of how both global innovation arbitrage and technological civil disobedience— or at least the threat thereof—might become a more prevalent feature of discussions about the governance of emerging technologies. And, in the process, that could lead to at least the partial spontaneous deregulation of certain sectors or technologies. Finally, I will discuss how this might affect technological governance more generally and accelerate the movement toward so-called “soft law” governance mechanisms as an alternative to traditional regulatory approaches. Continue reading →

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Wendell Wallach on the Challenge of Engineering Better Technology Ethics

by on April 20, 2016 · 0 comments

DM cover
On May 3rd, I’m excited to be participating in a discussion with Yale University bioethicist Wendell Wallach at the Microsoft Innovation & Policy Center in Washington, DC. (RSVP here.) Wallach and I will be discussing issues we write about in our new books, both of which focus on possible governance models for emerging technologies and the question of how much preemptive control society should exercise over new innovations.

Wallach’s latest book is entitled, A Dangerous Master: How to Keep Technology from Slipping beyond Our Control. And, as I’ve noted here recently, the greatly expanded second edition of my latest book, Permissionless Innovation: The Continuing Case for Comprehensive Technological Freedom, has just been released.

Of all the books of technological criticism or skepticism that I’ve read in recent years—and I have read stacks of them!— A Dangerous Master is by far the most thoughtful and interesting. I have grown accustomed to major works of technological criticism being caustic, angry affairs. Most of them are just dripping with dystopian dread and a sense of utter exasperation and outright disgust at the pace of modern technological change.

Although he is certainly concerned about a wide variety of modern technologies—drones, robotics, nanotech, and more—Wallach isn’t a purveyor of the politics of panic. There are some moments in the book when he resorts to some hyperbolic rhetoric, such as when he frets about an impending “techstorm” and the potential, as the book’s title suggests, for technology to become a “dangerous master” of humanity. For the most part, however, his approach is deeper and more dispassionate than what is found in the leading tracts of other modern techno-critics.

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UK Competition & Markets Authority on Online Platform Regulation

by on October 30, 2015 · 2 comments

I wanted to draw your attention to this important address on online platform regulation by Alex Chisholm, the head of UK’s Competition and Markets Authority. That’s the non-ministerial department in the UK responsible for competition policy issues. Chisholm delivered the address on October 27th at the Bundesnetzagentur conference in Bonn. It’s a terrific speech that other policymakers would be wise to read and mimic to ensure that antitrust and competition policy decisions don’t derail the many benefits of the Information Revolution.

“Today, as regulators, we have the responsibility but also the great historical privilege of playing an influential role in the deployment throughout the economy of the latest of these defining technological eras,” Chisholm began. “As regulators, we must try to minimise the inevitable mismatch between how we’ve done things before and the opportunities and risks of the new,” he argued.

He continued on to specify three recommendations for those crafting policy on this front: Continue reading →

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FTC’s Ohlhausen on Innovation, Prosperity, “Rational Optimism” & Wise Tech Policy

by on September 25, 2015 · 0 comments

commissioner-ohlhausenI wanted to draw your attention to yet another spectacular speech by Maureen K. Ohlhausen, a Commissioner with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). I have written here before about Commissioner Ohlhausen’s outstanding speeches, but this latest one might be her best yet.

On Tuesday, Ohlhausen was speaking at U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation day-long event on “The Internet of Everything: Data, Networks and Opportunities.” The conference featured various keynote speakers and panels discussing, “the many ways that data and Internet connectiviting is changing the face of business and society.” (It was my honor to also be invited to deliver an address to the crowd that day.)

As with many of her other recent addresses, Commissioner Ohlhausen stressed why it is so important that policymakers “approach new technologies and new business models with regulatory humility.” Building on the work of the great Austrian economist F.A. Hayek, who won a Nobel prize in part for his work explaining the limits of our knowledge to plan societies and economies, Ohlhausen argues that: Continue reading →

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Video of FTC Workshop Panel on Sharing Economy Policy Issues

by on June 12, 2015 · 2 comments

On June 9th, the Federal Trade Commission hosted an excellent workshop on “The ‘Sharing’ Economy: Issues Facing Platforms, Participants, and Regulators,” which included 4 major panels and dozens of experts speaking about these important issues. It was my great pleasure to be part of the 4th panel of the day on the policy implications of the sharing economy. Along with my Mercatus colleagues Christopher Koopman and Matt Mitchell, I submitted a 20-page filing  to the Commission summarizing our research findings in this area. (We also released a major new working paper that same day on, “How the Internet, the Sharing Economy, and Reputational Feedback Mechanisms Solve the ‘Lemons Problem.’” (All Mercatus Center research on sharing economy issues can be found on this page and we plan on releasing additional papers in coming months.)

The FTC has now posted the videos from their workshop and down below I have embedded my particular panel. My remarks begin around the 5-minute mark of the video.

http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1&isUI=1

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What Should the FTC Do about State & Local Barriers to Sharing Economy Innovation?

by on May 12, 2015 · 2 comments

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is taking a more active interest in state and local barriers to entry and innovation that could threaten the continued growth of the digital economy in general and the sharing economy in particular. The agency recently announced it would be hosting a June 9th workshop “to examine competition, consumer protection, and economic issues raised by the proliferation of online and mobile peer-to peer business platforms in certain sectors of the [sharing] economy.” Filings are due to the agency in this matter by May 26th. (Along with my Mercatus Center colleagues, I will be submitting comments and also releasing a big paper on reputational feedback mechanisms that same week. We have already released this paper on the general topic.)

Relatedly, just yesterday, the FTC sent a letter to Michigan policymakers about restricting entry by Tesla and other direct-to-consumer sellers of vehicles. Michigan passed a law in October 2014 prohibiting such direct sales. The FTC’s strongly-worded letter decries the state’s law as “protectionism for independent franchised dealers” noting that “current provisions operate as a special protection for dealers—a protection that is likely harming both competition and consumers.” The agency argues that:

consumers are the ones best situated to choose for themselves both the vehicles they want to buy and how they want to buy them. Automobile manufacturers have an economic incentive to respond to consumer preferences by choosing the most effective distribution method for their vehicle brands. Absent supportable public policy considerations, the law should permit automobile manufacturers to choose their distribution method to be responsive to the desires of motor vehicle buyers.

The agency cites the “well-developed body of research on these issues strongly suggests that government restrictions on distribution are rarely desirable for consumers” and the staff letter continues on to utterly demolish the bogus arguments set forth by defenders of the blatantly self-serving, cronyist law. (For more discussion of just how anti-competitive and anti-consumer these laws are in practice, see this January 2015 Mercatus Center study, “State Franchise Law Carjacks Auto Buyers,” by Jerry Ellig and Jesse Martinez.) Continue reading →

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Some Initial Thoughts on the FTC Internet of Things Report

by on January 28, 2015 · 3 comments

Yesterday, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) released its long-awaited report on “The Internet of Things: Privacy and Security in a Connected World.” The 55-page report is the result of a lengthy staff exploration of the issue, which kicked off with an FTC workshop on the issue that was held on November 19, 2013.

I’m still digesting all the details in the report, but I thought I’d offer a few quick thoughts on some of the major findings and recommendations from it. As I’ve noted here before, I’ve made the Internet of Things my top priority over the past year and have penned several essays about it here, as well as in a big new white paper (“The Internet of Things and Wearable Technology: Addressing Privacy and Security Concerns without Derailing Innovation”) that will be published in the Richmond Journal of Law & Technology shortly. (Also, here’s a compendium of most of what I’ve done on the issue thus far.)

I’ll begin with a few general thoughts on the FTC’s report and its overall approach to the Internet of Things and then discuss a few specific issues that I believe deserve attention. Continue reading →

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New Paper on Privacy & Security Implications of the Internet of Things & Wearable Technology

by on November 21, 2014 · 5 comments

IoT paperThe Mercatus Center at George Mason University has just released my latest working paper, “The Internet of Things and Wearable Technology: Addressing Privacy and Security Concerns without Derailing Innovation.” The “Internet of Things” (IoT) generally refers to “smart” devices that are connected to both the Internet and other devices. Wearable technologies are IoT devices that are worn somewhere on the body and which gather data about us for various purposes. These technologies promise to usher in the next wave of Internet-enabled services and data-driven innovation. Basically, the Internet will be “baked in” to almost everything that consumers own and come into contact with.

Some critics are worried about the privacy and security implications of the Internet of Things and wearable technology, however, and are proposing regulation to address these concerns. In my new 93-page article, I explain why preemptive, top-down regulation would derail the many life-enriching innovations that could come from these new IoT technologies. Building on a recent book of mine, I argue that “permissionless innovation,” which allows new technology to flourish and develop in a relatively unabated fashion, is the superior approach to the Internet of Things.

As I note in the paper and my earlier book, if we spend all our time living in fear of the worst-case scenarios — and basing public policies on them — then best-case scenarios can never come about. As the old saying goes: nothing ventured, nothing gained. Precautionary principle-based regulation paralyzes progress and must be avoided.  We instead need to find constructive, “bottom-up” solutions to the privacy and security risks accompanying these new IoT technologies instead of top-down controls that would limit the development of life-enriching IoT innovations. Continue reading →

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Slide Presentation: Policy Issues Surrounding the Internet of Things & Wearable Technology

by on September 12, 2014 · 3 comments

On Thursday, it was my great pleasure to present a draft of my forthcoming paper, “The Internet of Things & Wearable Technology: Addressing Privacy & Security Concerns without Derailing Innovation,” at a conference that took place at the Federal Communications Commission on “Regulating the Evolving Broadband Ecosystem.” The 3-day event was co-sponsored by the American Enterprise Institute and the University of Nebraska College of Law.

The 65-page working paper I presented is still going through final peer review and copyediting, but I posted a very rough first draft on SSRN for conference participants. I expect the paper to be released as a Mercatus Center working paper in October and then I hope to find a home for it in a law review. I will post the final version once it is released. [UPDATE:The final version of this working paper was released on November 19, 2014.]

In the meantime, however, I thought I would post the 46 slides I presented at the conference, which offer an overview of the nature of the Internet of Things and wearable technology, the potential economic opportunities that exist in this space, and the various privacy and security challenges that could hold this technological revolution back. I also outlined some constructive solutions to those concerns. I plan to be very active on these issues in coming months.

Continue reading →

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