Walk Out Technology: The Need to Amend Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act to Protect Consumer Privacy and Promote Corporate Transparency

Abstract

While the FTC can and has brought claims under Section 5 of FTC Act, there is a new need for federal legislation to be more specifically targeted toward online stores and physical stores that abuse the technology to track consumers. Companies need legislative guidelines on what information they can collect from consumers, what they can do with this information and how transparent they must be with consumers. The FTC’s reports are helpful to protect privacy, if companies actually follow them. There is a great need to amend Section 5 of the FTC to deal with consumer privacy in this new autonomous retail world. Amazon's "Just Walk Out" technology should not give Amazon the opportunity to walk all over consumers’ privacy.