The FTC requests comment on 2013 amendments to the children’s online privacy protection rule and whether additional changes are needed, the agency announced Wednesday. The comment period will be open for 90 days after Federal Register publication. A workshop is scheduled for Oct. 7. “In light of rapid technological changes that impact the online children’s marketplace, we must ensure COPPA remains effective,” Chairman Joe Simons said of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. The agency included specific questions. It wants to know if the rule affected “availability of websites or online services directed to children” and if it considers the right factors for determining if websites are directed at children. It asks about implications “for COPPA enforcement raised by technologies such as interactive television, interactive gaming, or other similar interactive media”; if the commission should consider exceptions to parental consent for educational purposes; and if the rule should be modified to “encourage general audience platforms to identify and police child-directed content uploaded by third parties.” This appears to be a move by the Trump FTC to help Google and “other child-directed digital marketers escape responsibility" for big data and manipulative marketing practices, said Center for Digital Democracy Executive Director Jeff Chester. “I am worried that this commission is more concerned about the profits of big platforms than the privacy of the public, especially America’s youth.”
Three tech-focused senators are disappointed the FTC reportedly didn't reach with Facebook "a strong, bipartisan agreement, sending the wrong message to tech companies.” Sens. Ed Markey D-Mass., Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Josh Hawley, R-Mo., said the potential $5 billion pact with the company (see 1907120054) "is a far cry from the type of monetary figure that would alter the incentives and behavior of Facebook and its peers." Such a settlement "would be egregiously inadequate given the extent of Facebook’s privacy violations," said a news release on Tuesday's letter to commissioners. They requested responses by Aug. 6 to questions about the deal. Queries included, "Will the FTC impose restrictions on Facebook’s upcoming cryptocurrency offering, Libra, as part of this settlement? If not, why not." Also Tuesday, legislators held a hearing on Libra (see 1907160042). The commission received the Blumenthal, Hawley and Markey letter, a spokesperson said, declining further comment.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation and Pierce Bainbridge filed a class-action status-seeking lawsuit on behalf of AT&T customers in California to stop the carrier and two data location aggregators “from allowing numerous entities -- including bounty hunters, car dealerships, landlords, and stalkers -- to access wireless customers’ real-time locations without authorization.” The suit was filed in the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of California. “AT&T and data aggregators have systematically violated the location privacy rights of tens of millions of AT&T customers,” said EFF Staff Attorney Aaron Mackey. “Consumers must stand up to protect their privacy and shut down this illegal market.” In May, FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel sent letters to CEOs of the carriers asking what they're doing to make sure real-time location information they collect isn’t being sold to aggregators (see 1905010167). Commissioner Geoffrey Starks also complained about companies selling data (see 1902080056). “The facts don’t support this lawsuit and we will fight it,” an AT&T spokesperson said now. “Location-based services like roadside assistance, fraud protection, and medical device alerts have clear and even life-saving benefits. We only share location data with customer consent. We stopped sharing location data with aggregators after reports of misuse.”
The National Council of Higher Education Resources pressed for clarity of Telephone Consumer Protection Act rules for calling student loan borrowers on their mobile devices, in a meeting with an aide to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai. The group reminded the FCC of the "tools, unique in the consumer credit space, made available by the Congress and the U.S. Department of Education specifically to help struggling borrowers.” A filing posted Monday in docket 02-278 also asked the FCC to define autodialer “in a way that sticks to the statutory language.”
Last month's D.C. Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals decision in Electronic Privacy Information Center v. Department of Commerce and Bureau of the Census confirms that VTDigger lacks standing to bring a Section 208 challenge against DOC on FirstNet privacy, the department said last week in a letter (in Pacer) to the 2nd Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. The local news publication claimed that, under Section 208 of the E-Government Act, DOC must prepare a "Privacy Impact Assessment" for FirstNet. “Plaintiffs urge that they have standing to bring a challenge under Section 208 based on the kind of informational injury the D.C. Circuit rejected” in the EPIC case, Commerce said. The D.C. Circuit expressly ‘reject[ed] the possibility that §208 can support an informational injury theory ... in the absence of a colorable privacy harm of the type that Congress sought to prevent through the E-Government Act’ on the ground that ‘Section 208 was not designed to vest a general right to information in the public.’”
T-Mobile has blocked 3.5 billion scam calls and warned customers of about 15 billion “Scam Likely” since launching its free Scam ID and Scam Block in March 2017, it said Thursday. T-Mobile warned of “about one billion ‘Scam Likely’ calls a month -- or 23,000 every minute.”
Federal law should recognize online data as consumer property, Rep. Doug Collins, R-Ga., said Wednesday, outlining principles for legislation planned for 2019. The concept is to establish “robust privacy rights and protections” that are more flexible than federal bureaucratic regimes, Collins said: “The American people don’t need new government bureaucracies and agency-imposed regulatory schemes to control their online lives.” The draft outline envisions a new law recognizing data as the property of those who generate it and enabling consumers to oversee commercial use of that data and opt out of certain uses.
Congress should outright ban federal government use of facial recognition technology, said Fight for the Future Tuesday. The digital rights advocate argued the technology is “unreliable, biased, and a threat to basic rights and safety.” A bipartisan House Oversight Committee group is weighing a federal moratorium on the technology (see 1905220058). People are realizing “unchecked facial recognition is a threat to civil rights and civil liberties,” FTC Commissioner Rohit Chopra tweeted.
Seventy-nine percent of U.S. broadband homes worry about data security and privacy issues, blogged Parks Associates Tuesday. Roughly 35 percent of U.S broadband households faced a data security problem -- including identity theft, data theft or a virus or spyware infection -- in the past 12 months. “Many consumers do not trust companies with their data, nor do they believe they receive adequate value for sharing their data,” said analyst Lindsay Gafford: They'll be more comfortable with connected products when security protections are built in and companies are “more transparent about how they collect and use” their data.
USTelecom and member companies asked the FCC to reconsider a policy of Universal Service Administrative Co. that may require individual employees who interact with a national Lifeline accountability database to enroll new Lifeline subscribers or verify existing ones to provide personally identifiable information, said a filing posted Friday to docket 17-287. USTelecom, AT&T, CenturyLink, Consolidated, Frontier, Verizon and Windstream representatives met July 1 with officials from the Wireline Bureau, including Deputy Chief Trent Harkrader. USTelecom said its members are "well-known to the Commission, and the Commission can easily trace any individual representative back through the parent organization using simple business records like work email address and business phone number." Other industry groups expressed similar concerns (see 1906140022). Stakeholders worry the national verifier program isn't incorporating application programming interfaces quickly enough (see 1907050032).