Senator Says Federal Law Protecting Children Online Needs Updating
September 30 2021 - 12:23PM
Dow Jones News
By John D. McKinnon
Sen. Maria Cantwell (D., Wash.) -- who chairs the powerful
Commerce Committee -- said the big policy takeaway from the current
controversy is the need to update the 1998 Children's Online
Privacy Protection Act, or Coppa. That's the federal law that sets
out the rules protecting children online.
"Updating Coppa will be essential," she said in her opening
statement at the Facebook Inc. hearing.
Coppa has been widely criticized as inadequate for the current
social media environment. The law has a couple of problems.
One is its requirement that a platform operator have "actual
knowledge" that it's collecting personal information from kids
before the law's toughest restrictions kick in. The other is its
somewhat arbitrary age cutoff. Only kids under 13 get its strongest
protections.
Both limits have created enforcement problems for the Federal
Trade Commission.
"The hardest problem for the FTC is the actual knowledge
standard," said David Vladeck, the former FTC consumer protection
chief, at a Senate hearing on Wednesday. He added, "I think we
[also] need to rethink what the right age is."
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
September 30, 2021 12:08 ET (16:08 GMT)
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