FTC Embracing Role Protecting Competition, Safeguarding Privacy, Ohlhausen Says
LAS VEGAS -- The FTC is looking forward to its renewed role policing competition in the broadband market, with the recent FCC repeal of the 2015 net neutrality order, acting FTC Chairman Maureen Ohlhausen said in an interview with CTA President Gary Shapiro at CES Tuesday. New transparency requirements included in the rule require carriers to provide information about how they manage traffic, Ohlhausen said. “If they don’t fulfill promises they make to consumers, then the FTC can bring an enforcement action,” she said, saying her commission will work with the FCC and DOJ to ensure competition in the market.
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Enforcing privacy is one of the trade commission's top priorities, said Ohlhausen, citing enforcement actions announced Tuesday against a revenge porn website company in Nevada. The FTC alleged MyEX.com violated federal and state law by posting intimate images of people, together with their personal information, without consent. A defendant agreed to a permanent ban on posting intimate images without consent, the FTC said. The case was challenging because the website owner lived outside the U.S. and was operating outside U.S. law, Ohlhausen said. "I was pleased to be able to bring this case," she said. "These are the kind of harms beyond financial that I think the FTC should be addressing."
Asked about the state of competition in the U.S., Ohlhausen said for broadband, the question needs to be examined through the lens of the types of broadband speeds that are available, which facilitates enormous innovation. “Technology keeps us moving ahead, creating new services so there is an increasing need for more broadband,” Ohlhausen said.
“Is big bad?” Shapiro asked, referencing concerns raised recently over large companies that gather a lot of data on consumers. "What are the guardrails when a company has a lot of data," Shapiro asked -- can consumers be assured that large companies won't act in an anticompetitive manner? “Antirust is a very fact-specific inquiry,” Ohlhausen said. “You have to look at why a company is big. Is it developing a lot of products -- we want that kind of dynamism.” If a company is big because it's buying a lot of other smaller companies in the same sector, that's a different matter, said the acting trade commission chief: Her agency looks at whether companies are using market power in an anticompetitive way such as colluding on price or agreeing how to divide up segments of the market. “That’s a very traditional area of antitrust,” she said.