Important update included below
I had the honor of appearing with Attorney General Rob McKenna (WA), FTC Commissioner Julie Brill, AAG Shannon Smith (WA) and Professor Paul Ohm (University of Colorado Law School) at the annual meeting of the Conference of the Western Attorneys General. The video is now available. A summary of my presentation is here.
Far more important, however, was the discussion by Commissioner Brill on behavioral advertising and what the Federal Trade Commission should do to address it. The Commissioner explained that the FTC has undergone two stages of privacy approaches: privacy 1.0, the notice and choice approach, which relied upon fair information practices to address privacy; and privacy 2.0, the harm model which arose under the leadership of former Chairman Muris. She described the need for a privacy 3.0 to address the problem of behavioral advertising, because consumers do not understand the complicated decision making present in the background of interest-based advertising.
What will be in privacy 3.0? Brill gave some clues:
Stay tuned. In the next year, we’re likely to see significant public policy advances on online advertising.