14812 Federal Register / Vol. 72, No. 60 / Thursday, March 29, 2007 / Notices 

7 Id. (24% of the 2.577 million victims who 

contacted law enforcement did not obtain a copy of 

a police report). 

8 Id. at 50 (43% of all 9.91 million victims contact 

an information provider). 

9Based upon staff’s analysis of data collected in 

the survey, these types of victims constitute 20% 

of the 3.23 million victims each year whose 

information is used to open new accounts or 

commit other frauds. 

10The hourly rates are based on average annual 

Bureau of Labor Statistics National Compensation 

Survey data, June 2005 (with 2005 as the most 

recent whole year information available, and June 

the focal median point). http://www.bls.gov/ncs/ 

ocs/sp/ncbl0832.pdf (see Table 1.1). 

1Commission Rule 4.2(d), 16 CFR 4.2(d). The 

comment must be accompanied by an explicit 

request for confidential treatment, including the 

factual and legal basis for the request, and must 

identify the specific portions of the comment to be 

withheld from the public record. The request will 

be granted or denied by the Commission’s General 

Counsel, consistent with applicable law and the 

public interest. See Commission Rule 4.9(c), 16 CFR 

4.9(c). 

a police report.7 Thus, staff estimates 

that the Rule will enable those victims 

who previously were unable to file 

reports with local law enforcement to 

now file reports with a state or federal 

law enforcement agency. Second, 4.261 

million victims annually contact an 

information furnisher.8 Staff estimates, 

based on its knowledge of identity theft 

trends, that the Rule will result in an 

increase of 10%, or 426,000, of these 

victims obtaining an identity theft 

report. Third, 646,000 victims do not 

take any action even though their 

information was used to open new 

accounts or to commit other frauds.9

Staff estimates, based on its knowledge 

of identity theft trends, that the Rule 

will likely result in 75%, or 485,000, of 

these victims obtaining identity theft 

reports. In sum, staff estimates that the 

Rule will increase by 1.529 million the 

number of individuals obtaining 

identity theft reports (618,000 + 426,000 

+ 485,000). 

Estimated total annual hours burden: 

586,000 hours (rounded to the nearest 

thousand). 

In its 2004 notice of proposed 

rulemaking and corresponding 

submission to OMB, FTC staff 

estimated, based on the experience of 

the Commission’s Consumer Response 

Center, that an individual would spend 

an average of 5 minutes finding and 

reviewing filing instructions, 8 minutes 

filing the law enforcement report with 

the law enforcement agency, and 5 

minutes submitting the law enforcement 

report and any additional information or 

documentation to the information 

furnisher or consumer reporting agency, 

resulting in an average of 18 minutes for 

each identity theft report. 

Staff now estimates, based on the 

ongoing experience of the Commission’s 

Consumer Response Center, that an 

individual will spend 5 minutes finding 

and reviewing filing instructions, 13 

minutes filing the law enforcement 

report with the law enforcement agency 

(due to added entry fields), and 5 

minutes submitting the law enforcement 

report and any additional information or 

documentation to the information 

furnisher or consumer reporting agency, 

resulting in an average of 23 minutes for 

each identity theft report. Thus, the 

annual information collection burden 

for the estimated 1.529 million new 

identity theft reports due to the Rule 

will be 586,000 hours. [(1.529 million × 

23 minutes)/60 minutes] 

Estimated labor costs: $10,911,000 

(rounded to the nearest thousand). 

Commission staff derived labor costs 

by applying appropriate hourly cost 

figures to the burden hours described 

above. According to the Bureau of Labor 

Statistics survey from June 2005, the 

average national wage for individuals 

was $18.62.10 Applying this average 

national wage to the 586,000 burden 

hours results in an estimated $10.911 

million labor cost burden on individuals 

who obtain identity theft reports ($18.62 

× 586,000 hours). 

Estimated annual non-labor cost 

burden: $0 or minimal. 

Staff believes that the Rule’s 

paperwork burden imposes negligible 

capital or other non-labor costs, as an 

identity theft victim is likely to have the 

necessary supplies and/or equipment 

already (telephone, computer, paper, 

envelopes) for purposes of obtaining the 

identity theft report and submitting it to 

information furnishers or consumer 

reporting agencies. 

William Blumenthal, 

General Counsel. 

[FR Doc. E7–5818 Filed 3–28–07; 8:45 am] 

BILLING CODE 6750–01–P 

FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION 

Agency Information Collection 

Activities; Submission for OMB 

Review; Comment Request 

AGENCY: Federal Trade Commission. 

ACTION: Notice. 

SUMMARY: The Federal Trade 

Commission (‘‘FTC’’ or ‘‘Commission’’) 

is seeking public comments on its 

proposal to extend the current Office of 

Management and Budget (‘‘OMB’’) 

clearance for information collection 

requirements contained in its Contact 

Lens Rule (‘‘Rule’’) from April 30, 2007 

through April 30, 2010. The information 

collection requirements described below 

will be submitted to OMB for review as 

required by the Paperwork Reduction 

Act (‘‘PRA’’). 

DATES: Comments must be received on 

or before April 30, 2007. 

ADDRESSES: Interested parties are 

invited to submit written comments. 

Comments should refer to ‘‘Contact Lens 

Rule: FTC File No. R411002,’’ to 

facilitate the organization of comments. 

A comment filed in paper form should 

include this reference both in the text 

and on the envelope and should be 

mailed or delivered, with two complete 

copies, to the following address: Federal 

Trade Commission, Office of the 

Secretary, Room H–135 (Annex J), 600 

Pennsylvania Ave., NW., Washington, 

DC 20580. Because U.S. Postal Mail in 

the Washington area and at the 

Commission is subject to lengthy delays 

due to heightened security precautions, 

please consider submitting your 

comments in electronic form, as 

prescribed below. However, if the 

comment contains any material for 

which confidential treatment is 

requested, it must be filed in paper 

form, and the first page of the document 

must be clearly labeled ‘‘Confidential.’’ 1

Comments filed in electronic form 

should be submitted by following the 

instructions on the web-based form at 

https://secure.commentworks.com/ 

ContactLensRule/. To ensure that the 

Commission considers an electronic 

comment, you must file it on the webbased form at the https:// 

secure.commentworks.com/ 

ContactLensRule/ weblink. If this notice 

appears at www.regulations.gov, you 

may also file an electronic comment 

through that Web site. The Commission 

will consider all comments that 

regulations.gov forwards to it. 

Comments also should be submitted 

to: Office of Management and Budget, 

ATTN: Desk Officer for the Federal 

Trade Commission. Comments should 

be submitted by facsimile to (202) 395–

6974 because U.S. Postal Mail is subject 

to lengthy delays due to heightened 

security precautions. 

The FTC Act and other laws the 

Commission administers permit the 

collection of public comments to 

consider and use in this proceeding as 

appropriate. All timely and responsive 

public comments will be considered by 

the Commission and will be available, 

to the extent practicable, to the public 

on the FTC Web site at http:// 

www.ftc.gov. As a matter of discretion, 

the FTC makes every effort to remove 

home contact information for 

individuals from the public comments it 

receives before placing those comments 


jlentini on PROD1PC65 with NOTICES
Federal Register / Vol. 72, No. 60 / Thursday, March 29, 2007 / Notices 14813 

2See Statistics on Eyeglasses and Contact Lenses, 

All About Vision, August, 2006, available at 

http://www.allaboutvision.com/resources/statisticseyewear.htm. See also Barr, J. ‘‘2004 Annual 

Report,’’ Contact Lens Spectrum, Jan. 2005, 

available at http://www.clspectrum.com/ 

article.aspx?article=12733. 

on the FTC Web site. More information, 

including routine uses permitted by the 

Privacy Act, may be found in the FTC’s 

privacy policy at http://www.ftc.gov/ftc/ 

privacy.htm. 

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: 

Requests for additional information 

should be addressed to Karen Jagielski, 

Attorney, Division of Advertising 

Practices, Bureau of Consumer 

Protection, Federal Trade Commission, 

600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW., 

Washington, DC 20580, (202) 326–2509. 

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Under the 

PRA, 44 U.S.C. 3501–3520, Federal 

agencies must obtain approval from 

OMB for each collection of information 

they conduct or sponsor. ‘‘Collection of 

information’’ means agency requests or 

requirements that members of the public 

submit reports, keep records, or provide 

information to a third party. 44 U.S.C. 

3502(3); 5 CFR 1320.3(c). As required by 

section 3506(c)(2)(A) of the PRA, the 

FTC is providing the opportunity for 

public comment while awaiting OMB 

action on the Commission’s request to 

extend the existing paperwork clearance 

for the regulations noted herein. 

In its first Notice published in the 

Federal Register on December 18, 2006, 

71 FR 75754, the FTC sought public 

comments on its proposal to extend 

through April 30, 2010 its current OMB 

clearance for information collection 

requirements contained in its Rule. The 

FTC has received no public comments. 

The FTC is providing this second 

opportunity for public comment while 

seeking OMB approval to extend the 

existing paperwork clearance for the 

Rule. All comments should be filed as 

prescribed in the ADDRESSES section 

above, and must be received on or 

before April 30, 2007. 

The Rule, 16 CFR part 315, was 

promulgated by the FTC pursuant to the 

Fairness to Contact Lens Consumers Act 

(‘‘FCLCA’’), Pub. L. 108–164 (December 

6, 2003), which was enacted to enable 

consumers to purchase contact lenses 

from the seller of their choice. The Rule 

became effective on August 2, 2004. As 

mandated by the FCLCA, the Rule 

requires the release and verification of 

contact lens prescriptions and contains 

recordkeeping requirements applying to 

both prescribers and sellers of contact 

lenses. 

Specifically, the Rule requires that 

prescribers provide a copy of the 

prescription to the consumer upon the 

completion of a contact lens fitting and 

verify or provide prescriptions to 

authorized third parties. The Rule also 

mandates that a contact lens seller may 

sell contact lenses only in accordance 

with a prescription that the seller either: 

(a) Has received from the patient or 

prescriber; or (b) has verified through 

direct communication with the 

prescriber. In addition, the Rule 

imposes recordkeeping requirements on 

contact lens prescribers and sellers. For 

example, the Rule requires prescribers 

to document in their patients’ records 

the medical reasons for setting a contact 

lens prescription expiration date of less 

than one year. The Rule requires contact 

lens sellers to maintain records for three 

years of all direct communications 

involved in obtaining verification of a 

contact lens prescription, as well as 

prescriptions, or copies thereof, which 

they receive directly from customers or 

prescribers. 

The information retained under the 

Rule’s recordkeeping requirements is 

used by the Commission to substantiate 

compliance with the Rule and may also 

provide a basis for the Commission to 

bring an enforcement action. Without 

the required records, it would be 

difficult either to ensure that entities are 

complying with the Rule’s requirements 

or to bring enforcement actions based on 

violations of the Rule. 

Commission staff estimates the 

paperwork burden of the FCLCA and 

Rule based on its knowledge of the eye 

care industry. Staff believes there will 

be some burden on individual 

prescribers to provide contact lens 

prescriptions, although it involves 

merely writing a few items of 

information onto a slip of paper and 

handing it to the patient, or perhaps 

mailing or faxing it to a third party. In 

addition, there will be some 

recordkeeping burden on contact lens 

sellers—including retaining 

prescriptions or records of ‘‘direct 

communications’’—pertaining to each 

sale of contact lenses to consumers who 

received their original prescription from 

a third party prescriber. 

Burden Statement 

Estimated total annual hours burden: 

950,000 hours (rounded to the nearest 

thousand). 

In its 2003 PRA-related Federal 

Register Notice and corresponding 

submission to OMB, FTC staff estimated 

that the annual paperwork burden for 

the various disclosure and 

recordkeeping requirements under the 

FCLCA and then-proposed Rule would 

be approximately 600,000 disclosure 

hours for contact lens prescribers and 

approximately 300,000 recordkeeping 

hours for contact lens sellers, a 

combined industry total of 900,000 

hours. 

No provisions in the Rule have been 

amended since staff’s prior submission 

to OMB. The Rules disclosure and 

recordkeeping requirements, therefore, 

remain the same. However, the number 

of contact lens wearers in the United 

States has increased to approximately 

38 million.2 Therefore, assuming an 

annual contact lens exam for each 

contact lens wearer, 38 million people 

would receive a copy of their 

prescription each year under the Rule. 

At an estimated one minute per 

prescription, the annual time spent by 

prescribers complying with the 

disclosure requirement would be a 

maximum of 633,333 hours. [(38 million 

× 1 minute)/60 minutes = 633,333 

hours] 

As required by the FCLCA, the Rule 

also imposes two recordkeeping 

requirements. First, prescribers must 

document the specific medical reasons 

for setting a contact lens prescription 

expiration date shorter than the oneyear minimum established by the 

FCLCA. This burden is likely to be nil 

because the requirement applies only in 

cases when the prescriber invokes the 

medical judgment exception, which is 

expected to occur infrequently, and 

prescribers are likely to record this 

information in the ordinary course of 

business as part of their patients’

medical records. The OMB regulation 

that implements the PRA defines 

‘‘burden’’ to exclude any effort that 

would be expended regardless of a 

regulatory requirement. 

5 CFR 1320.3(B)(3)(2). 

Second, the Rule requires contact lens 

sellers to maintain certain documents 

relating to contact lens sales. As noted 

above, a seller may sell contact lenses 

only in accordance with a prescription 

that the seller either (a) has received 

from the patient or prescriber, or (b) has 

verified through direct communication 

with the prescriber. The FCLCA requires 

sellers to retain prescriptions and 

records of communications with 

prescribers relating to prescription 

verification for three years. 

Staff believes that the burden of 

complying with this requirement is low. 

Sellers who seek verification of contact 

lens prescriptions must retain one or 

two records for each contact lens sale: 

Either the relevant prescription itself, or 

the verification request and any 

response from the prescriber. Staff 

estimates that such recordkeeping will 

entail a maximum of five minutes per 

sale, including time spent preparing a 

file and actually filing the record(s). 


jlentini on PROD1PC65 with NOTICES
14814 Federal Register / Vol. 72, No. 60 / Thursday, March 29, 2007 / Notices 

3The FTC’s February 2005 study, ‘‘The Strength 

of Competition in the Rx Sale of Contact Lenses: An 

FTC Study,’’ cites various data that, averaged 

together, suggests that approximately 10% of 

contact lens sales are by online and mail-order 

sellers. The report is available online at http:// 

www.ftc.gov/reports/contactlens/ 

050214contactlensrpt.pdf. 

4Optometrist hourly wages are drawn from the 

Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Occupational 

Employment and Statistics Survey, May 2005, 

based on BLS-sampled data it collected over a 3- 

year period. See http://www.bls.gov/news.release/ 

pdf/ocwage.pdf (Table 1). Relevant clerical hourly 

rates are unavailable from that survey, however, 

and are drawn instead from the BLS National 

Compensation Survey, June 2005 (with 2005 as the 

most recent whole year information available, and 

June the focal median point). See http:// 

www.bls.gov/ncs/ocs/sp/ncbl0832.pdf (Table 1.1). 

5The Vision Council of America and Jobson 

Optical Research have conducted large scale 

continuous consumer research under the name 

VisionWatch, which reports on the vision care 

industry. The basis for this statistic is on file with 

the Federal Trade Commission. 

1Commission Rule 4.2(d), 16 CFR 4.2(d). The 

comment must be accompanied by an explicit 

request for confidential treatment, including the 

factual and legal basis for the request, and must 

identify the specific portions of the comment to be 

withheld from the public record. The request will 

be granted or denied by the Commission’s General 

Counsel, consistent with applicable law and the 

public interest. See Commission Rule 4.9(c), 16 CFR 

4.9(c). 

Staff also believes that, based on its 

knowledge of the industry, this burden 

will fall primarily on mail order and 

Internet-based sellers of contact lenses, 

as they are the entities in the industry 

most reliant on obtaining or verifying 

contact lens prescriptions. Based on 

conversations with the industry, staff 

estimates that these entities currently 

account for approximately 10% of sales 

in the contact lens market 3 and, by 

extension, that approximately 3.8 

million consumers—10% of the 38 

million contact lens wearers in the 

United States—purchase their lenses 

from them. 

At an estimated five minutes per sale 

to each of 3.8 million consumers, 

contact lens sellers will spend a total of 

316,667 burden hours complying with 

the recordkeeping requirement. [(3.8 

million × 5 minutes)/60 minutes = 

316,667 hours] This estimate likely 

overstates the actual burden, however, 

because it includes the time spent by 

sellers who already keep records 

pertaining to contact lens sales in the 

ordinary course of business. In addition, 

the estimate may overstate the time 

spent by sellers to the extent that 

records (e.g., verification requests) are 

generated and stored automatically and 

electronically, which staff understands 

is the case for some larger online sellers. 

Estimated labor costs: $32,819,000 

(rounded to the nearest thousand). 

Commission staff derived labor costs 

by applying appropriate hourly cost 

figures to the burden hours described 

above. Staff estimates, based on its 

knowledge of the industry, that 

optometrists account for approximately 

75% of prescribers. Consequently, for 

simplicity, staff will focus on their 

average hourly wage in estimating 

prescribers’ labor cost burden. 

According to Bureau of Labor 

Statistics from May 2005, salaried 

optometrists earn an average wage of 

$45.91 per hour and clerical personnel 

earn an average of $11.82 per hour.4

With these categories of personnel, 

respectively, likely to perform the brunt 

of the disclosure and recordkeeping 

aspects of the Rule, estimated total labor 

cost attributable to the Rule would be 

approximately $32.8 million. [($45.91 × 

633,333 hours) + ($11.82 × 316,667 

hours) = $32,819,322] 

The contact lens market is a multibillion dollar market; one recent survey 

estimates that contact lens sales totaled 

$2.37 billion from Jan 1, 2006 to Dec 31, 

2006.5 Thus, the total labor cost burden 

estimate of $32.8 million represents 

approximately 1% of the overall market. 

Estimated annual non-labor cost 

burden: $0 or minimal. 

Staff believes that the Rule’s 

disclosure and recordkeeping 

requirements impose negligible capital 

or other non-labor costs, as the affected 

entities are likely to have the necessary 

supplies and/or equipment already (e.g., 

prescription pads, patients’ medical 

charts, facsimile machines and paper, 

telephones, and recordkeeping facilities 

such as filing cabinets or other storage). 

William Blumenthal, 

General Counsel. 

[FR Doc. E7–5819 Filed 3–28–07; 8:45 am] 

BILLING CODE 6750–01–P 

FEDERAL TRADE COMMISSION 

Privacy Act of 1974; System of 

Records 

AGENCY: Federal Trade Commission 

(FTC). 

ACTION: Proposed routine use; request 

for public comment. 

SUMMARY: The FTC proposes to adopt a 

new routine use that would permit 

disclosure of FTC records governed by 

the Privacy Act when reasonably 

necessary to respond and prevent, 

minimize, or remedy harm that may 

result from an agency data breach or 

compromise. 

DATES: The deadline for public 

comments is April 30, 2007. Comments 

received after that date will be 

considered at the FTC’s discretion. 

ADDRESSES: Interested parties are 

invited to submit written comments. 

Comments should refer to ‘‘Privacy Act 

of 1974; System of Records: FTC File 

No. P072104’’ to facilitate the 

organization of comments. A comment 

filed in paper form should include this 

reference both in the text and on the 

envelope and should be mailed or 

delivered, with two complete copies, to 

the following address: Federal Trade 

Commission, Room H–135 (Annex H), 

600 Pennsylvania Ave., NW., 

Washington, DC 20580. The FTC is 

requesting that any comment filed in 

paper form be sent by courier or 

overnight service, if possible, because 

U.S. postal mail in the Washington area 

and at the Commission is subject to 

delay due to heightened security 

precautions. Moreover, because paper 

mail in the Washington area and at the 

Commission is subject to delay, please 

consider submitting your comments in 

electronic form, as prescribed below. 

However, if the comment contains any 

material for which confidential 

treatment is requested, it must be filed 

in paper form, and the first page of the 

document must be clearly labeled 

‘‘Confidential.’’ 1

Comments filed in electronic form 

should be submitted by following the 

instructions on the web-based form at 

https://secure.commentworks.com/ 

PrivacyAct1974. To ensure that the 

Commission considers an electronic 

comment, you must file it on the webbased form at the https:// 

secure.commentworks.com/ 

PrivacyAct1974 weblink. If this notice 

appears at www.regulations.gov, you 

may also file an electronic comment 

through that Web site. The Commission 

will consider all comments that 

regulations.gov forwards to it. 

The FTC Act and other laws the 

Commission administers permit the 

collection of public comments to 

consider and use in this matter as 

appropriate. All timely and responsive 

public comments will be considered by 

the Commission and will be available to 

the public on the FTC Web site, to the 

extent practicable, at www.ftc.gov. As a 

matter of discretion, the FTC makes 

every effort to remove home contact 

information for individuals from the 

public comments it receives before 

placing those comments on the FTC 

Web site. More information, including 

routine uses permitted by the Privacy 

Act, may be found in the FTC’s privacy 

policy at http://www.ftc.gov/ftc/ 

privacy.htm. 

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT: Alex 

Tang, Attorney, FTC, Office of General 


jlentini on PROD1PC65 with NOTICES