Law note · United States
FTC Act Section 5, Unfair or Deceptive Acts or Practices (privacy and data-security enforcement)
Prohibits unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce and empowers the FTC, not private plaintiffs, to investigate and enforce against them. This is the primary federal vehicle for privacy and data-security enforcement in the absence of a comprehensive statute, reaching misrepresentations about data collection or protection and unfair data practices that cause substantial, unavoidable consumer injury.
The Commission's 2023 Policy Statement on Biometric Information applies this authority to biometric identifiers, including those derived from photographs, videos, or voice recordings, regardless of whether the underlying image or recording was itself publicly available.
What it asks of an app
- Do not engage in unfair or deceptive practices when collecting, using, or sharing personal data.
- Assess foreseeable privacy harms before deploying a system that collects or uses biometric identifiers derived from photographs, videos, or voice recordings, and disclose material facts about that collection.
When LexLint raises it
Declared activities: crawls_web, trains_models, deploys_chatbot, automated_outreach, high_risk_decisions, processes_voice, processes_biometrics
Primary source: Official U.S. Code text (Office of the Law Revision Counsel), 15 U.S.C. Section 45