Biden’s Executive Order Links Data Collection to Competition

President Joe Biden‘s push for Federal Trade Commission rules protecting consumer data privacy highlights ties between tech companies’ power and the personal information they collect.

Biden urged the FTC to write rules governing “the surveillance of users” in a wide-reaching executive order on competition, singling out unfair data collection practices that could damage competition and consumer privacy.

The commission laid the groundwork for launching a data privacy proposal when it recently streamlined its process for writing rules. The effort gives the agency an opportunity to push forward with privacy protections through regulation, as federal legislative proposals have failed to ...