Consumer Law

Who Is the Obama Administration Seeking Advice From on Consumer Issues?

By Jeff Sovern

Nan Hunter of Georgetown is compiling on her blog a list of law professors in the Obama administration (If you know of others involved in consumer matters in the Obama administration--law professors or not--please post it in the comments).  In the consumer arena, she lists Peter Swire of Ohio State as being on the FTC Review Team.  You can find Peter's home page here; he's a very talented commentator on privacy issues and served as the Chief Counselor for Privacy in the Clinton administration.  He is also a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress. Though he is undoubtedly best known for his writings on privacy, he has also published or testified on other consumer law issues, including the CRA, FCRA,  and lending discrimination.  He recently gave a talk titled The FTC @ 100 and the Future of Consumer Protection (the written statement is here) in which he said the FTC "is, and should remain, the preeminent consumer protection agency in the world" and made the following recommendations on online commerce:

1. Appoint a chief technology officer for the FTC. A chief technology officer at the commission would provide vision and leadership for IT issues affecting consumers? online activities.

2. Assess policy initiatives by functional area, not geography. For online harms, local and state consumer protection agencies will face major challenges in playing their historical role in enforcement. The FTC should step forward with initiatives defined by function, such as fighting spam, protecting against identity theft, and combating spyware and other malware.

3. Use technology to implement an effective mix of federal and federated enforcement. The Consumer Sentinel program is a promising step toward using new technologies to share information and link enforcement agencies both nationally and internationally.

4. Use new technologies effectively in consumer education. The commission should increase its use of multimedia and other emerging technologies to conduct consumer education. In addition, participating in emerging technologies will provide insights to improve the commission?s policy and enforcement activities for new media as they evolve.

5. Create and implement a research agenda for consumer protection online. An important part of being the leading consumer protection agency for online activities is to create a research agenda on issues of major concern to consumers and consumer protection. Topics for research include how to provide notice about online activities, the growing role of behavioral and experimental economics, and a special role the commission can play in computer security research to protect consumers.

Full post as published by CL&P Blog on November 21, 2008 (boomark / email).