Law Profs Say Government Has the Power to Demand Companies Protect Consumer Data

Editor’s Note: The government already has extensive statutory authority over private sector cyber security. See, The Federal Cybersecurity Regulation Already in Place and Do Agencies Already Have the Authority to Issue Critical Infrastructure Protection Regulations?

From: Bloomberg/BNA

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The Federal Trade Commission’s requirement that companies implement reasonable data security rather than directly telling companies to adopt uniform measures drives innovation and promotes understanding of best practices to protect consumers, a group of law professors from some of the most prestigious law schools in the country told a federal appeals court.

There is an ongoing lawsuit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit challenging the FTC’s authority to enforce data security standards. The dispute between the FTC and now-defunct medical testing company LabMD Inc. has been heating up since 2013 when the commission filed an administrative complaint after discovering that the company’s patient information was available on a file-sharing network.  In January, businesses, technology groups and other interested parties filed friend of the court briefs in the Eleventh Circuit, challenging the FTC’s authority to regulate cybersecurity and to bring administrative actions against companies.

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