Data breaches exposing consumers’ sensitive information continue unabated even as organizations amass and sell vast sets of consumers’ personal, financial, and location data to a thriving data broker industry. Concerns over the use of the growing stockpile of sensitive personal data have reached a fevered pitch in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, which raises the specter of law enforcement weaponization of widely available digitized content against American citizens.
Against this backdrop, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) announced the launch of an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR) to crack down on harmful commercial surveillance and lax data security.
