Thanks very much for covering my February 5th Twitter Chat [“FTC’s Brill Does Twitter Chat”, The Privacy Advisor, Feb 6, 2014]. I was pleased that the participants raised so many diverse issues –including big data, data security, data brokers, and EU-US relations concerning privacy and data transfers – all issues in which I’ve been actively participating. You did a nice job highlighting the key portions of the chat.

Tomorrow I head back to Brussels to engage with my European colleagues once again concerning issues surrounding privacy, in particular online tracking. As I do, I wanted to clarify one of the points I made in my Twitter chat about FTC-EU enforcement cooperation. As you know, @lexanderhanff asked me about the current state of an FTC-EU mutual enforcement program. I’d like your readers to know that I did not mean for my necessarily short, Twitter-length response to indicate that I was “shut[ting] down the idea” of a future plan of collaboration between FTC and European officials. To the contrary, the FTC has a strong record of cooperation with our European counterparts, and we are actively working to build on that cooperation. We are engaged in important ongoing dialogues on how to improve enforcement cooperation as part of our active participation in various organizations, including the International Conference of Data Protection and Privacy Commissioners, the Global Privacy Enforcement Network, and other initiatives.

Thanks very much for giving me the opportunity to clarify my views of one of many important issues surrounding FTC-EU enforcement cooperation on privacy and data security matters.

Sincerely,

Julie Brill
Commissioner
Federal Trade Commission