EPIC Tells Senate U.S. Faces Data Protection "Crisis"
In advance of a hearing on consumer privacy, EPIC told the Senate Commerce Committee that America is facing a data protection "crisis." EPIC highlighted recent breaches at Google and Facebook, coupled with the FTC's failure to enforce its own consent orders, and said the system is "badly broken." EPIC also noted that more than six months have passed since the FTC said it would investigate Cambridge Analytica, "but still there is no report, no outcome, and no fine." EPIC joined a coalition of 28 consumer privacy groups in a letter to the Senate Commerce Committee, endorsing "federal baseline legislation, heightened penalties for data breaches, the end of arbitration clauses, the establishment of a privacy agency in the U.S., techniques for data minimization, [and] algorithmic transparency to prevent the secret profiling of American consumers." In today's statement, EPIC told the Committee "The FTC's failure to enforce consumer privacy safeguards has led not only to diminished data protection in the United States, but also to less innovation and less competition among Internet services."