Last week the LEC’s Program on Economics & Privacy (PEP), along with University of Arizona’s TechLaw, filed a comment in response to the Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on “Commercial Surveillance and Data Security.”

The Comment urges the FTC to refrain from issuing a proposed Commercial Surveillance rule. After describing the available empirical evidence—which shows the tremendous consumer value generated by the online ad-supported ecosystem and little reason to believe that consumers suffer widespread harm from the routine collection and use of data in the online commercial context—the Comment concludes that departure from the FTC’s current case-by-case application of Section 5, in favor of broad prohibitions on the collection and use of data, is likely to do more harm than good.

You can view the full joint comment here.

The Program on Economics & Privacy (PEP) at George Mason University Antonin Scalia Law School invites applications for the Research Roundtable on Regulating Privacy.  In the past year, Congress has considered sweeping national privacy legislation, and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has begun the process to implement rulemaking to curtail so-called “commercial surveillance.”  Accordingly, we seek authors to develop and present original scholarly work that focuses broadly on the proper scope of privacy regulation, including the need for such regulation, the costs and benefits of such regulation, and the legal issues presented by such regulation.  Issues of interest include, but are not limited to: 

Continue reading “Call for Papers: Research Roundtable on “Regulating Privacy””

The report, titled “Private Litigation Under the California Consumer Privacy Act – CCPA Report Update,” examines the private actions filed under the CCPA from April 1, 2021 through December 31, 2021.

Executive Summary
The California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) went into effect on January 1, 2020. Broadly, the CCPA is designed to protect consumers’ privacy by making the collection and use of consumer data more transparent, and giving consumers the right to prevent companies from sharing their data with third parties. Although these core privacy provisions are enforced exclusively by the California Attorney General, the CCPA also provides a private right of action when a business’s failure to implement “reasonable security practices and procedures” results in the theft of personal information.

In 2021, the Program on Economics & Privacy issued its initial report, “Private Litigation Under the California Consumer Privacy Act,” which examined private CCPA cases filed from its effective date (January 2020) through the first quarter of 2021. This new Report provides data on private actions filed under the CCPA from April 1, 2021 through December 31, 2021, and highlights developments in cases covered in the 2021 Report.

Please click here to read the report.