House Judiciary - EPIC - November 2019

Chairman David Cicilline and FTC Chairman Joe Simons
House Committee on Antitrust
November 13, 2019

EPIC Statement for Committee hearing (Nov. 12, 2019)

Transcript

Representative David Cicilline

Chairman Simons, in a letter for today's hearing, Marc Rotenberg, the President of EPIC states, and I quote that “it's increasingly clear that data protection, competition and innovation are all on the same side in a healthy Internet economy. The critical challenge now for the Committee is to ensure that the Federal Trade Commission fulfills its mission and safeguards these interests. The current path is not sustainable.” And Chairman Simmons, how do you respond to concerns that the FTC has failed to act in response to numerous antitrust and privacy complaints over the past decade has effectively ignored the obvious cost to personal privacy that has resulted from consolidation in the digital marketplace over this period?

And do you agree that market consolidation in digital markets is coming at the expense of strong use your privacy?

FTC Chairman Joseph Simons

Well, first of all, I reject that, that argument.

Representative David Cicilline

Which argument?

FTC Chairman Joseph Simons

Well, the one you just state from EPIC. So first of all, on the privacy side, we have one hundred year old statute that was not in any way designed or anticipating the privacy issues that we face today. My predecessors at the FTC did an amazing job inventing essentially out of whole cloth a privacy regime that is the most aggressive in the world.

So I think if you want us to do more on the privacy front than we need, we need help from you. Our tools - we've done as much as we can do with the tools we have. What I was trying to explain before was that we do not have authority even remotely approaching what GDPR has - or what the California Act has as well.

So if you want us to do more, you need to give us the authority in terms of -- I'm sorry, go ahead.

Representative David Cicilline

So I take it from that, you do agree with the last statement I made that market consolidation in digital markets is in fact coming at the expense of strong user privacy. You're just suggesting you need some additional tools to respond to that.

FTC Chairman Joseph Simons

Well, what I've said - what I've said before, is that the privacy issue is a critical issue to the U.S., to our country, and it involves very significant social and societal values. And in order to do privacy the right way, it has to be done with those values in mind and you need (inaudible)

Representative David Cicilline

So Chairman, my question was a simple one, you are seeing in your work that in fact user privacy has been harmed as a result of this market consolidation in the digital marketplace. You just said that part of the reason is if you -- we want you to do more to protect user privacy, you need additional tools, right?

So I take it you that's based on some observations you're making about the marketplace.

FTC Chairman Joseph Simons

Well, we have ongoing investigations involved in the digital marketplace and so that's under study, I mean not study, it’s under investigation, it's not a study.