The US has a different notion of who owns personal data than Germany or Europe in general. In the US, the collector of your personal data owns it, more or less

The US has a different notion of who owns personal data than Germany or Europe in general. In the US, the collector of your personal data owns it, more or less. Notice that in this case, the FTC is attempting to use the court's approval of the sale of Radio Shack's assets in order to force restrictions on the use of the personal data. That's because they couldn't use virtually non-existent personal data protection laws.