Business Roundtable Urges Federal Pre-emptive Privacy Law Without Right of Action

Congress should pass and the FTC should adopt a federal privacy regulation pre-empting state privacy and data breach laws absent a private right of action, Business Roundtable wrote the agency Friday in docket 2018-0098. The association deferred to Congress on whether the FTC should have rulemaking authority. ISPs are “sufficiently different” from other online companies to merit privacy rules “tailored to them,” OTI said in separate comments on privacy. OTI cited a New School Digital Equity Laboratory report showing ISPs “generally employ language that is legally vague, with little specificity into their data practices for collection and use.” Disclosure about how data is used and shared is also lacking, OTI said. Users should have the right to access, correct, delete and port data, Companies should be restricted from using data for secondary and discriminatory purposes, OTI said.