Karl Herchenroeder

Expect the Supreme Court to consider how much the digital economy has evolved since 1992 when it considers a potential sales tax law reversal for online retailers, various parties told us Monday. The high court will hear oral argument Tuesday in South Dakota v. Wayfair (see 1803080066).

A Democratic senator and others told us they're wary of Donald Trump attacking Amazon. The latest salvo from the president came Thursday, when he ordered reassessment of the financial situation of the U.S. Postal Service, which Trump says loses money because of Amazon. Trump also attacked The Washington Post, owned by Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, for its coverage of the administration.

There's no evidence suggesting U.S. consumers value personal data “at all,” though news like the Cambridge Analytica privacy breach (see 1804110065) could change perceptions rapidly, acting Director of the FTC Bureau of Competition Bruce Hoffman said Thursday. “There is no good reason to think that consumers value data about themselves in the same way that they value money in their bank accounts,” Hoffman said at a Computer and Communications Industry Association event.

While Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told lawmakers Wednesday his personal information was scraped in the Cambridge Analytica privacy breach, he avoided committing to minimizing user data collection yet said regulation of social media companies is “inevitable.” His wide-ranging testimony at the House Commerce Committee was a second consecutive day of congressional testimony (see 1804100054).

The House Judiciary Committee unanimously passed a compromise version of the Music Modernization Act (MMA) (HR-5447) Wednesday without amendments (see 1804100051). Before the 32-0 vote, Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-Calif., criticized the bill for not permitting legacy artists to renegotiate unfair contracts, an issue Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, also hopes Congress will address.

It was “clearly a mistake” for Facebook to trust Cambridge Analytica had deleted ill-gotten user data in 2015, and the platform needs to proactively police to ensure its tools are used for good, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg told nearly half the Senate in a hearing Tuesday (see 1804090026). Sens. Ed Markey, D-Mass., and Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., told reporters separately about a “privacy bill of rights” they are crafting in response to the controversy. The bill is modeled after the EU’s general data protection regulation, they said. An aide for Sen. Brian Schatz, D-Hawaii, said the senator is working on his own legislative proposal.

Amid a steady stream of data breach news, there's broad agreement from various industries that Congress should establish a federal notification standard, but disagreement remains between retail groups over data security mandates, stakeholders told us.

After a data scandal affecting some 87 million platform users, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg blamed himself for not taking a “broad enough view of our responsibility.” The remarks come in testimony prepared for presentation to Congress Wednesday in which he also casts blame on scholar Aleksandr Kogan and Cambridge Analytica.

Facebook will require identity and location disclosure for political advertisers, it announced Friday, also endorsing a key bill to thwart foreign interference in elections and becoming perhaps the first major tech company to do so. "Election interference is a problem that's bigger than any one platform, and that's why we support" the Honest Ads Act (see 1803260045), CEO Mark Zuckerberg said Friday. "This will help raise the bar for all political advertising online." The bill would pave the way to apply some disclosure rules to online ads that are now required for ads on more traditional media. The Cambridge Analytica intrusion and Facebook's role also came up at length at a panel discussion Friday (see 1804060057)

Expect incoming FTC members to open debate on what constitutes harm to consumer privacy, an issue in the background with only two sitting commissioners, former FTC Consumer Protection Bureau Director David Vladeck said Friday. It’s likely that President Donald Trump’s FTC nominations (see 1803270046) will be confirmed in the next month or so, George Mason University law professor James Cooper said alongside Vladeck at a GMU event. Because the commission has been deadlocked with only two seated commissioners, acting Chairman Maureen Ohlhausen, a Republican, and Democrat Terrell McSweeny, the administration’s policy changes haven’t been realized, Cooper said.