Considering the recent events in data breaches which include headline grabbing names like Equifax, Brooks Brothers, Verizon, FAFSA: IRS Data Retrieval Tool, and InterContinental Hotels Group, it is become clearer that consumers need additional protection for the sensitive information these companies are entrusted with. Consumers are being left with a narrowing filed of options when their
information is stolen from a company that they may or may not have known a company had.
In response to this rising epidemic, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is hosting a workshop on Informational Injury on December 12, 2017. The FTC is the governmental agency tasked with developing policy initiatives that affect consumers, competition, and the United States Economy. Formed in September 1914, the FTC’s mission is “Working to protect consumers by preventing anticompetitive, deceptive, and unfair business practices, enhancing informed consumer choice and public understanding of the competitive process, and accomplishing this without unduly burdening legitimate business activity.”
The workshop will focus on the injuries suffered by consumers in these data breaches or when a company misuses the data a consumer has trusted them with. They are looking to address questions, the prevalence, how to measure, and how to characterize these injuries. This will take place while the FTC attempts to gain a better understanding of the factors that businesses and consumers consider when providing sensitive information. Specifically, the FTC is interested in these following questions:
- What are the qualitatively different types of injuries from privacy and data security incidents? What are some real-life examples of these types of informational injury to consumers and to businesses?
- What frameworks might we use to assess these different injuries? How do we quantify injuries? How might frameworks treat past, current, and potential future outcomes in quantifying injury? How might frameworks differ for different types of injury?
- How do businesses evaluate the benefits, costs, and risks of collecting and using information considering potential injuries? How do they make tradeoffs? How do they assess the risks of different kinds of data breach? What market and legal incentives do they face, and how do these incentives affect their decisions?
- How do consumers perceive and evaluate the benefits, costs, and risks of sharing information considering potential injuries? What obstacles do they face in conducting such an evaluation? How do they evaluate tradeoffs?
The workshop is free and open to the public to be viewed locally at the Federal Trade Commission Constitution Center, or online via a webcast. If you would like to participate the Federal Trade Commission invites you to submit comments and review their detailed notice here. People are encouraged to submit additional questions and concerns online or by mail. Submissions will be accepted through October 27, 2017. Mark your calendars.
Following the Informational Injury workshop the Federal Trade Commission has also broadcast that it will be hosting PrivacyCon in February of 2018, which seeks original research on consumer injury. If this is up your alley, the FTC invites you to review their research guidelines and prepare to present here.
Submit comments and see the detailed notice
