Privacy & Information Security Law Blog

As reported in BNA’s Privacy Law Watch, on July 19, 2011, President Obama announced his intention to nominate Maureen K. Ohlhausen to the Federal Trade Commission. Obama sent his official nomination to the Senate on July 21, 2011. If approved, Ohlhausen will serve a seven-year term beginning on September 26, 2011, replacing Commissioner William E. Kovacic.

Ohlhausen previously worked in various senior positions at the FTC, most recently as Director of the FTC’s Office of Policy Planning from 2004 to 2008 where she headed the FTC’s Internet Access Task Force. Ohlhausen also served as an attorney advisor to former Commissioner Orson Swindle and an attorney in the FTC’s Office of General Counsel. After leaving the FTC in 2008, Ohlhausen became technology policy counsel for the Business Software Alliance, a group that the BNA noted has been “a strong supporter of federal data breach notification legislation, but has lobbied for less government control in areas such as behavioral advertising and cybersecurity.”

Ohlhausen graduated from George Mason University School of Law where she later taught privacy law classes as an adjunct faculty member. She is a Senior Editor of the American Bar Association’s Antitrust Law Journal.