A battle over privacy at the FCC, sparked by last year's net neutrality rules, is quickly gaining speed. In the coming months, the FCC is expected to craft regulations on how broadband providers handle sensitive consumer data. Barring a court ruling, the commissioners could vote on dealing with new privacy rules as early as March of this year. As such, industry and privacy advocates on both sides of the issue have stepped up to the plate to make their case.
One might ask why there a push to create new regulations exclusively for broadband service. Here's why:
"The commission treated Internet service providers like traditional phone service to apply new rules requiring all Web traffic to be handled in the same way. That left the FCC in the difficult spot of applying privacy regulations for phone companies to broadband providers. Those rules protected information on whom a customer called and when, for example.
"But applying those regulations directly to new technology would have been a tall order for the agency."
Read the rest of the article on: The Hill
Consumer advocates hope the FCC will draft stricter rules for how companies such as Comcast and Time Warner Cable will treat customers' information. But large broadband industry groups are wary of the FCC crafting new rules and contend that any framework should match standards already in place.
"[Last week] [b]roadband industry lobby groups urged the FCC not to impose privacy rules that dictate 'specific methods' of protecting customer data, since that would prevent 'rapid innovation.'
"ISPs should have 'flexibility' in how they protect customers’ privacy and security, said the letter from the American Cable Association, Competitive Carriers Association, Consumer Technology Association, CTIA, the Internet Commerce Coalition, the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, and USTelecom.
"The debate stems from the FCC's decision to reclassify fixed and mobile broadband providers as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act. The FCC has said it intends to enforce Section 222 of Title II, which requires telecommunications carriers to protect the confidentiality of customers' proprietary information. But since the commission's existing privacy rules apply to telephone service rather than broadband, the FCC has to draw up new rules for Internet service. The phone rules protect personal information such as the numbers customers call and when they call them."
Read the rest of the article on: Ars Technica
Privacy and consumer groups hope that the FCC, through a new set of regulations, will use its authority in material ways that the FTC, which previously had legal authority over ISPs, couldn't. They argue that the FTC's privacy standard--that is, whether a certain business practice is "unfair or deceptive" (see Sec. 5 of the FTC Act, also known as 15 U.S. Code Sec. 45)--is not a strong enough of a standard to police broadband providers. Instead, they believe that the FCC already possesses ability to give their rules more teeth, at least more than what the common-law of FTC can offer.
The implications of this, of course, are huge. John Simpson, director of the privacy project at Consumer Watchdog explains, the FCC, "under reclassification [of Internet providers], can explicitly make rules that say thou-shalt-this, thou-shalt-not-that. And that’s an entirely different situation than what the FTC does." Indeed, what he says holds true, as the FTC is not allowed to tell businesses what kind of privacy practices it must have. Rather, it primarily operates in a reactionary manner, i.e., in response to complaints lodged against a company or to an already-existing issue with a company's posted privacy policy.
Stuck in legislative limbo, industry groups, privacy advocates, lobbyists and the like will have no choice but to duke it out until some form of compromise is ultimately reached.