But the FTC s general jurisdiction is over commerce, and governments fall outside of FTC s purview. The broader lesson here is that FTC cannot be much of a privacy regulatory agency because of its jurisdictional limitations. I have a second point. I reviewed these sites recently and found that the White House did as well as it could in sensitivity to kids privacy. It accepts e-mail from minors, but it tells them to ask for parental consent first.
Kids presumably have a constitutional right to petition government just like anyone else.
The other agencies I looked at did not do so well. The Housing and Urban Development Department asks kids to share information about what they did to help the homeless. The site only asks for first names, but one of the stories I saw included a last name as well. At the Health and Human Services Department, things are worse. In one place, kids are offered copies of an antismoking poster.