Wheeler Circulating Data Privacy NPRM for Vote at March 31 FCC Meeting
Chairman Tom Wheeler is circulating an order for the FCC March 31 meeting opening a rulemaking on privacy rules for ISPs, agency officials said. The move was expected and first reported by Communications Daily. A fight is expected at what promises to be a contentious open meeting. FCC Republicans Ajit Pai and Mike O’Rielly have expressed concerns about whether the agency is well positioned to oversee privacy.
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An FCC fact sheet, released Thursday, questions ISP complaints that they can see a decreasingly small amount of data, especially compared to edge providers like Facebook and Google. A recent report (b.gatech.edu/1T4mm0C), supported by ISPs, argued they have only limited access to consumer data, and the data they have isn't unique.
“Every day, consumers hand over very personal information simply by using the residential or mobile broadband services they’ve paid for,” the fact sheet said (fcc.us/1piAMy4). “Why? Because by carrying Internet traffic, ISPs can collect their customers’ personal and private information to create detailed profiles about their lives.”
An ISP handles all its customers’ network traffic, “which means it has an unobstructed view of all of their unencrypted online activity -- the websites they visit, the applications they use,” the FCC said. “If customers have a mobile device, their provider can track their physical and online activities throughout the day in real time.” Encryption doesn’t mean that data is less visible to ISPs, the FCC said. “Even when data is encrypted, broadband providers can still see the websites that a customer visits, how often they visit them, and the amount of time they spend on each website,” the fact sheet said. “Using this information, ISPs can piece together enormous amounts of information about their customers -- including private information such as a chronic medical condition or financial problems.”
ISPs also have a unique relationship with their customers, the fact sheet said. “A consumer’s relationship with her ISP is very different than the one she has with a website or app,” it said. “Consumers can move instantaneously to a different website, search engine or application. But once they sign up for broadband service, consumers can scarcely avoid the network for which they are paying a monthly fee.”