The FTC Commissioner, Terrell McSweeny as well as the Chief Technologist, Ashkan Soltani, were in Las Vegas this week attending the Black Hat and DEF CON conferences. The agency was there interacting with a variety of people including those involved with data security and the hacking culture. This is the second year that the FTC was in attendance at this conference, showing that they are well aware that they need to interact directly with the BlackHat community in order to stay up to date with the latest threats to consumers.
While at the conference, McSweeny sat down with the Washington Post to do a lengthy interview about their attendance. The interview was quite informative and well worth a read by anyone working online. The FTC’s impact on the digital world is only going to grow as we move into the future, so keeping up to date with their actions is absolutely essential. You can read some points I believe are especially important to marketers here, but for the full interview follow the link at the bottom of the page to view the Washington Post publication.
One of the biggest questions was concerning how much involvement and enforcement in the tech space we should expect to see from the FTC going forward. McSweeney replied saying, “I don’t know that I would characterize it as more enforcement so much I would say we’re going to continue to protect consumers wherever they are.” Later in the answer, however, she said, “So, yes, you’ll see more cases involving tech, but it’s not because we’re changing our focus, but because that’s where consumers are going.”
She was also asked about what powers the FTC has when it comes to enforcement in the digital arena. She said, “Essentially, we take an authority that has been around for a really long time that I think Congress quite rightly intended to be flexible to adapt to a changing marketplace. We continue to adapt it to protect consumers in a really important way.”
As you can see, the FTC believes it already has most of the authority it needs to enforce what they believe are the consumers best interests. She did go on to mention a few specific areas where he would like to see changes to the laws to allow them to do more.
For the full interview, click HERE.
