FIRST IN MT: EU COMMISSIONER CALLS FOR CONSUMER SAFETY COLLAB — Reynders is making the rounds in Washington today, meeting with top Biden officials to discuss ways to improve consumer protections online. He's sitting down with Khan, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau director (and recently departed FTC commissioner) Rohit Chopra and Consumer Product Safety Commission Chair Alex Hoehn-Saric, he told POLITICO's Rebecca Kern in an interview. — His ask: Reynders wants to work with the U.S. consumer protection agency leaders to better protect consumer finance and product safety online. The EU has proposed updates to existing consumer credit and product safety rules, given the increase in counterfeit products sold online during the Covid-19 pandemic. Reynders said he's seen some action from agencies and digital platforms, but doesn't expect as much expediency in Congress. House and Senate lawmakers have pushed to ban the sale of counterfeit goods online with the bipartisan INFORM Consumers Act ( H.R. 5502, S. 936). The House Energy and Commerce Committee advanced their bill in November. The legislation would require large online marketplaces like Amazon and eBay to verify the identity of high-volume third-party sellers as a means of cracking down on fake products. Reynders said the EU and U.S. have faced the same challenges when it comes to tackling online counterfeits so "there's the same protections online and offline." — Other meetings: Reynders also met with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas as part of a EU-U.S. ministerial meeting on Thursday. They spoke about hate speech and the role of platforms in removing noxious content. "We need to implement the same principles, but sometimes in different ways," Reynders said. The European Commission advanced legislation last week that would criminalize hate speech and violence through EU-wide rules. It still has to get approval from the European Parliament and get unanimous approval by the EU Council's 27 member countries. Reynders also met Attorney General Merrick Garland and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo to discuss the EU's Digital Services Act during his whirlwind D.C. tour this week. FAKE META ACCOUNTS TARGET JOURNALISTS ET. AL — Meta, the parent company of Facebook, removed hundreds of fake Facebook and Instagram accounts — targeting people in more than 100 countries — that had been associated with digital surveillance activities run by seven organizations, including one with ties to Chinese domestic law enforcement. — A report published by Meta Thursday focused on "surveillance-for-hire" groups, which the company said created false personas on Facebook to monitor, engage with and dupe journalists, activists and human rights campaigners worldwide. "The existence and proliferation of these services worldwide raises a number of important questions," the report concluded. "Our own investigation ... demonstrated that targeting is indeed indiscriminate and includes journalists, dissidents, critics of authoritarian regimes, families of opposition and human rights activists." — Congress calls for stronger action: The Meta report, which describes private firms selling surveillance services to regimes that abuse human rights, "makes it abundantly clear that more must be done to stop this mercenary marketplace," House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said Thursday. "By enabling indiscriminate surveillance against journalists and political dissidents, among others, these companies pose a clear threat to human rights." Schiff was among a group of Democratic House and Senate lawmakers who separately called this week for the Biden administration to sanction four surveillance firms, including the Israeli spyware-maker NSO Group, "for enabling human rights violations by authoritarian regimes." PLUS: TELL ME HOW YOU REALLY FEEL — Consumers are feeling queasy about the idea of the metaverse. A new National Research Group survey of 4,500 people in the U.S. found a majority expressed anxiety tied to expanded reliance on technology: Eighty-seven percent of respondents said people are too addicted to social media, and 79 percent said social media puts too much power in the hands of tech companies. The analysis was done this past spring, several months before Facebook changed its name to Meta to align with the version of the metaverse it's developing — something it describes as a space where people can socialize, work and play together in a virtual reality. Even so, don't expect those worries to scare off too many potential users. Two-thirds of consumers said they're excited about the potential of the metaverse, and nearly half of respondents said they plan to spend time on the metaverse in the future. FTC FRAUD RULES GET THE GREEN LIGHT (BUT THAT'S ABOUT IT) — Both of the FTC's GOP commissioners voted to open a rulemaking to ban government and business impersonation fraud, a leading tactic for scammers. — But don't assume that means they'll support Khan's other planned rules. Republican Commissioner Christine Wilson said she believes rulemakings are generally "problematic" but would support this one because "there is no legit business justification for fraud." Commissioner Noah Phillips also warned that he remains "wary of a rule that lacks clarity" and urged businesses to weigh in on the liability (or lack thereof) for those whose services aid fraudsters, such as payment providers or web-hosting services. — Verdict? Khan will likely need a third Democratic vote in the form of Alvaro Bedoya to bring about her more sweeping rulemakings, such as one focused on stopping privacy abuses and algorithmic discrimination. SPEAKING OF PRIVACY — Speakers at this week's NTIA listening sessions on privacy and civil rights drove home the point that there's a role for the White House and federal agencies to play in consumer privacy in the U.S. — and they called on the Commerce Department agency to help focus the Biden administration's efforts. But as the discussions wrapped Thursday afternoon, Deputy Commerce Secretary Don Graves had few specifics about the department's privacy agenda or next steps, beyond the meetings' stated objective of putting out yet another report. Commerce has "been helping companies develop their privacy programs … as well as fostering the workforce necessary to staff these programs," Graves said. "The department has been working with the European Commission to enhance the Privacy Shield framework as well. … And through the NTIA, we've been advancing the public conversation on privacy policy through these listening sessions." — By the way: Talks on a successor to the transatlantic data-sharing pact known as Privacy Shield have also been slow-moving, if they've moved at all. | 
Comments
Post a Comment