INTRODUCTION

The Federal Trade Commission is one of the most powerful regulatory agencies in the country, but it is also small and depends on close working relationships among staff. The FTC is recognized as one of the best agencies to work for, and, in recent years, openings at the Agency have attracted hundreds of applications, from even partner-level attorneys. This chapter gives an overview of the FTC's organization, its consumer protection powers, and investigative procedures. This chapter is primarily descriptive and intended to introduce the reader to a high-level portrait of the FTC's structure, jurisdiction, and powers. In Chapter 12, we return to these elements, invoking them to evaluate changes the FTC could make in order to optimize its privacy activities.

The FTC is a staff-driven agency. In practice, most matters are identified by staff and brought before the Commission. The commissioners’ power is expressed mainly through up/down votes on requests to bring matters or accept settlements, or through public dissents and other commentary warning the staff to switch direction or focus.

Many advocates and others wishing to influence the FTC focus on commissioners, but the staff is in a way more powerful and more enduring. In particular, advocates tend to ignore the FTC's Bureau of Economics. The economists play a key role in evaluation of matters, and, in privacy, the economists’ role steers the Agency away from monetary remedies in its cases. Engagement with the Bureau of Economics is key to changing the Agency's posture on privacy, and this theme will be taken up again in Chapter 12.

The FTC conceives of itself as a law enforcement agency. It thus shares some characteristics of such agencies. For instance, it has a strong internal culture to meet in person, one purpose of which is to avoid creating records that might attract Congressional attention or be obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests. FTC employees take secrecy of agency investigations seriously. Starting with the 1914 act and persisting to this day, FTC employees can be charged with a misdemeanor and fined for making “public any information obtained by the commission without its authority, unless directed by a court.”

As federal law enforcement is increasingly occupied with antiterrorism efforts, the FTC has had to pursue matters that in the past would have been charged as criminal frauds by the Department of Justice.