I don't think anyone in America trusts the FTC it examine anything right now. Or at least not to examine it with the best interest of the American people in mind.
> Prior to becoming FTC Chairman, Simons was a partner and co-chair of the Antitrust Group at the law firm of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP. Simons has held two previous positions at the Commission. He served as Director of the FTC’s Bureau of Competition between 2001 and 2003, during which he was responsible for overseeing the re-invigoration of the FTC’s non-merger enforcement program. In an earlier stint at the Commission in the 1980s, Simons served as the FTC’s Associate Director for Mergers and the Assistant Director for Evaluation. Simons earned the FTC’s Award for Meritorious Service. [0]
The "Antitrust Group" at Paul Weiss isn't in the business of trust busting. That's the group that defends businesses accused of antitrust violations. Not my first pick for head of an agency that is chartered with protecting American consumers.
I'm not sure what you mean by "involvement"? He was with the agency for 2 years from 2001-2003 and for 2 years in the 1980's. I understand that e.g., prosecutors become defense attorneys and vice versa, but in those cases they have clients or bosses to ensure they're working in good faith. I'm skeptical that anyone in the Trump administration will exert pressure on Simon to run the FTC as an advocate for US consumers.
This skepticism is the product of an administration that hires people like Ryan Zinke and Tom Price. None of his hires get the benefit of the doubt.
He was Director of the FTC's Bureau of Competition, and earned an FTC award of meritorious service.
> I'm skeptical that anyone in the Trump administration will exert pressure on Simon to run the FTC as an advocate for US consumers.
Agreed— I would just like to point out that his working in corporate law should have no negative impact on the outcome. If our administration truly wanted someone who wouldn't do anything to defend American consumers, they could find that in a wide range of candidates.
The only argument that would raise issue with him working in corporate law prior to this appointment would be to claim that he may give preferential treatment to those he previously defended. This is an entirely separate issue from Trump, and while possible, I would be very surprised if the government had no federal oversight of this position. This claim, if I'm not mistaken, would actually amount to a criminal level of corruption.
Probably because of the current net neutrality challenges in Congress to replace net neutrality [1].
The removal of net neutrality took oversight from the FCC where it was Title II and essentially a utility, over to the FTC where it cannot be seen as a utility.
This action is just the FTC making it look like they are challenging them to try to defeat the net neutrality push and act like the FTC would do something about abusive ISPs regarding net neutrality and private data protections which were both removed in 2017 and put under the FTC from the FCC.
When the bill is defeated in the Senate, some members will mention that the FTC right now it looking into the ISPs/telcos but that is just for show.
Ultimately the FTC is a worse place to put net neutrality oversight since at the FCC it is a utility and the liabilities are greater for the ISPs, plus they can't throttle data or sell ads/private data as easy.
Both net neutrality and privacy protections [2][3] were removed at the FCC and put on the FTC which is only now suddenly doing something for show due to the movement of the new net neutrality push.
Jeff Flake initially pushed the removal of privacy protections [2] and it led to the net neutrality bill and both move oversight from FCC under Title II to the FTC under where all there are are fines and less liability after abuse.
> Under the FTC’s stewardship, our internet economy has become the envy of the world. The FTC helped by establishing clear standards and robust enforcement mechanisms that protect our sensitive information while remaining flexible enough to respond to our preferences as consumers.
> When it comes to federal regulations, to borrow a phrase from back on the ranch, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Unfortunately, the previous administration decided to search for a problem when we already had the solution.
> In February 2015, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) undertook a unilateral power-grab by asserting jurisdiction over ISPs. This bureaucratic turf battle stripped ISPs of their traditional regulator, and could have thrown the entire internet ecosystem into flux. But it went virtually unnoticed by the media and activists who care about privacy.
> After more than a year of ad-hoc privacy regulation, the FCC decided to adopt its own rules. Instead of basing the rules on proven regulatory framework that applies throughout the rest of the internet, the FCC pushed through new rules on a party-line vote in the waning days of the previous administration.
...
> Now the FCC and the FTC can work hand-in-hand to enforce a uniform privacy framework for ISPs and the rest of the Internet. In an early sign of how successful this model can be, the major broadband providers have already updated their privacy policies to make it clear how consumers can opt out of targeted advertising.
The reason ISPs want to keep the FTC in charge is net neutrality and privacy protections can be broken and smaller fines can be paid if they are ever challenged. With the FCC they were liable under different Title II / utility protections that both actually prevented abuse and made harsher penalties for breaking it for ISPs.
This is quite a good show by the ISPs and FTC though.
