Court Approves FTC-Facebook Deal, But Says Data Protection Laws Need Updating

Despite objections from EPIC and other consumer groups, a federal judge has approved the Federal Trade Commission’s settlement with Facebook over the company’s alleged violations of the 2012 consent decree and the FTC Act. The court called Facebook’s alleged conduct “stunning,” “unscrupulous,” “shocking,” and “underhanded,” and even stated that it “might well have fashioned different remedies were it doing so out of whole cloth.” The court nevertheless approved the deal because of the “deferential” standard it felt bound to apply, but the court warned that, should the FTC accuse Facebook of further violations of the law, the court “may not apply quite the same deference to the terms of a proposed resolution.” EPIC had moved to intervene in the case and filed an amicus brief arguing that the deal imposes “few new obligations on the company that would limit the collection and use of personal data, nor will there be any significant changes in business practices.” The court denied EPIC’s motion to intervene but acknowledged that EPIC’s arguments as amicus “call into question the adequacy of laws governing how technology companies that collect and monetize Americans’ personal information must treat that information.”