01 Sep Judge Duffey addressing the FTC in court regarding LabMD in the Northern District Court of Georgia.
…. how does any company in the United States operate when they are trying to focus on what HIPAA requires and to have some other agency parachute in and say, well, I know that’s what they require, but we require something different, and some company says, well, tell me exactly what we are supposed to do, and you say, well, all we can say is you are not supposed to do what you did. And if you want to conform and protect people, you ought to give them some guidance as to what you do and do not expect, what is or is not required. You are a regulatory agency. I suspect you can do that. But I think that’s what happens when you jump too quickly into something that you want to do, and whether that’s circumstances or whether that’s agency motivation, I don’t know. But it seems to me that it’s hard for a company that wants to — even a company who hires people from the outside and says what do we have to do, and they say you have to do this, but I can’t tell you what the FTC rules are because they have never told anybody. Again, I think the public is served by guiding people beforehand rather than beating them after they — after-hand. But the assistant director doesn’t have the authority to do that. He reports to the deputy director, who reports to the director, who reports to the commission. So he’s way down in the pecking order.
