Fair Information Practice Principles

The United States Federal Trade Commission's Fair Information Practice Principles (FIPPs) are guidelines that represent widely accepted concepts concerning fair information practice in an electronic marketplace.

FTC Fair Information Practice Principles are the result of the Commission's inquiry into the manner in which online entities collect and use personal information and safeguards to assure that practice is fair and provides adequate information privacy protection. The FTC has been studying online privacy issues since 1995, and in its 1998 report, the Commission described the widely accepted Fair Information Practice Principles of Notice, Choice, Access, and Security. The Commission also identified Enforcement, the use of a reliable mechanism to provide sanctions for noncompliance as a critical component of any governmental or self-regulatory program to protect online privacy.

Fair Information Practice was initially proposed and named by the US Secretary's Advisory Committee on Automated Personal Data Systems in a 1973 report, Records, Computers and the Rights of Citizens, issued in response to the growing use of automated data systems containing information about individuals. The central contribution of the Advisory Committee was the development of a code of fair information practice for automated personal data systems. The Privacy Protection Study Commission also may have contributed to the development of FIPs principles in its 1977 report, Personal Privacy in an Information Society.

As privacy laws spread to other countries in Europe, international institutions took up privacy with a focus on the international implications of privacy regulation. In 1980, the Council of Europe adopted a Convention for the Protection of Individuals with Regard to Automatic Processing of Personal Data. At the same time, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) proposed similar privacy guidelines in the OECD Guidelines on the Protection of Privacy and Transborder Flows of Personal Data. The OECD Guidelines, Council of Europe Convention, and European Union Data Protection Directive relied on FIPs as core principles. All three organizations revised and extended the original U.S. statement of FIPs, with the OECD Privacy Guidelines being the version most often cited in subsequent years.

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