Sheila Millar Quoted in FTCWatch Article on Children's Online Privacy Enforcement

Keller and Heckman partner Sheila Millar was interviewed by FTCWatch for the article “Kids’ online privacy reform driven by lax enforcement, advocates say.” The article discusses the view of some advocates that the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), the key national law protecting children’s privacy online, needs to be updated and more vigorously enforced. Sens. Ed Markey (D-MA) and Josh Hawley (R-MO) recently introduced a bill that would, among other things, create a digital marketing bill of rights for children’s privacy and a new Youth Privacy and Marketing Division within the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

Millar’s experienced evaluation of the situation concludes that “the current situation isn’t broken” and that “the solution of additional bureaucratic measures within the Federal Trade Commission isn’t obviously needed.” In response to assertions that the current enforcement regime is not tough enough, Millar replied that “it should not be assumed by anyone that you look solely at the existence of published consent agreements as a metric to evaluate the level of engagement by the Federal Trade Commission in the area of children’s privacy.”

The FTCWatch article in its entirety is available here.