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FCC Warns ISPs It's Getting Tough on Privacy Issues

The FCC has issued an enforcement advisory (pdf) warning broadband ISPs that the agency's now going to be seriously enforcing privacy-related issues. The unsurprising move comes after the agency's reclassification of ISPs as common carriers under Title II, and after a series of recent roundtable discussions on how ISPs could better protect consumer privacy.

Simply put, the FCC is warning ISPs that they're bound by the tough privacy protections already established for traditional phone service (Section 222 of the Communications Act) after the FCC gets done with some modifications for the broadband era. These are relatively basic protections that include not sharing personal data with third parties unless consumers give explicit permission, or ensuring stored consumer data is encrypted.

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"The Commission has found that absent privacy protections, a broadband provider’s use of personal and proprietary information could be at odds with its customers’ interests," the FCC said in its advisory.

Unsurprisingly, ISPs have fought tooth and nail against any new privacy requirements in the age of zombie cookies, location data tracking, clickstream monitoring, and other sophisticated new snoopvertising.

Verizon, for example, for years has fought privacy protections, claiming that "public shame" would keep them honest in terms of privacy. Of course Verizon was caught recently modifying user data traffic to embed undeletable stealth cookies users couldn't opt out of, something it took security researchers two years to find and another six months for Verizon to seriously address.

The FCC has yet to get specific about precisely some of the specifics of the plan, it's urging ISPs to come forward and ask the regulator questions as a sign of "good faith." It's unclear what the FCC intends to see as broadband violations; AT&T's decision to charge its Gigapower customers $30 more if they want to opt out of deep packet inspection and ads

Most recommended from 17 comments


photomankc
join:2015-05-07
Liberty, MO

3 recommendations

photomankc

Member

Pot, this is Kettle. Kettle, this is Pot.

The federal governement, you know, the one that collects sweeping amounts of data from cell phones. Requires network hardware to include hooks for wiretapping. Has super-secret squirrel gear in place at major backbone locations to sift through everything it can get its hands on, is admonishing *anyone* else on privacy issues? It would be comical, except they actually can say it straight faced.