[elliekelly]

Commissioner Phillips makes a pretty disingenuous argument. The purpose of FTC Act Section 6(b), as I'm sure Phillips well knows, is to collect information in order to inform the FTC's ability to propose policy and legislation. In fact reports written from 6(b) requests are often called "studies" or "policy research" in the media.

> These are different companies, some of which have strikingly different business models.

That's usually the goal when you're sampling how an industry operates.

And so disingenuous are the other points he makes that I honestly don't believe Phillips believes most of what he's written. But when I got to the sentence where he called the FTC's privacy staff "the most impactful privacy enforcers in the world" and the FTC's regulation of consumer privacy "an effective enforcement program" it's hard to take anything else he says seriously.

I'll admit I did get a kick out of him citing Executive Order 13892[1] which basically says government agencies must be "fair and transparent" when collecting information from regulated entities. How deliciously ironic he's willing to put his foot down in the name of unfair, confusing, and overly broad information gathering.

[1]https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2019/10/15/2019-22...