Ex-FTC Officials See Ferguson Taking Firmer Stance on Parental Rights

Officials highlighted contrasting enforcement and policy stances from former FTC Chair Lina Khan and current Chair Andrew Ferguson.

Khan’s initial announcement on new rules under the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) signaled the FTC wanted to relieve parents of the burden of constantly monitoring kids’ online activity and instead require platforms to be designed with child safety in mind, said Stacy Feuer, a former FTC privacy attorney who now is a senior vice president at the Entertainment Software Rating Board.

Ferguson’s statement on the FTC’s September 2024 report on social media data practices shows a “much firmer parental rights” approach, said Feuer. While Ferguson concurred with factual discussions about harms to children, he suggested the report should have “focused more on using legislation that protects the online rights of parents and children,” she said. Feuer noted Ferguson asked Congress to enable parents to assert “direct control over their children’s online activities and the personal data those activities generate.” He wants parents to have their “own chosen approach” to protecting children online, she said: “It’s such a different philosophical approach that I will be looking to see [it] in any action or statements that the commission makes.”

Another example highlighting this difference was the FTC’s initial COPPA announcement backing schools’ ability to provide consent for educational technology-related data collection for children, said Maneesha Mithal, a former FTC Division of Privacy and Identity Protection lawyer, now a partner at Wilson Sonsini. Ferguson’s statements show he didn’t want to codify school-sanctioned consent in order to guard parents from overreach, she said. The FTC’s June 5 workshop on digital harms to children will provide further insight into the agency's approach to child safety under Ferguson, she added.

Signals from Ferguson and Republican state attorneys general suggest the FTC and Republican enforcers will continue treating geolocation data as sensitive information subject to “heightened protections,” said Sara DePaul, a former FTC Office of International Affairs attorney now working on global public policy at AT&T. This is backed by Ferguson’s statements on the FTC’s privacy settlement with OnStar, initiated by the prior administration (see 2501170068) and related enforcement from attorneys general in Texas and Arkansas (see 2502260044) and (see 2503060060), she said.

If companies plan to collect and share geolocation data for secondary uses, consumer notice and consent needs to be clear, she said. Data brokers likewise will need to show the consumer data they collected and sold had the appropriate notice and consent at the time of collection, she said: “Irrespective of political leanings, location information is going to continue to be considered sensitive.”