Consumers Deserve More Privacy Protections, Not Less

[Commentary] “Few rights are so fundamental as the right to privacy in our daily lives, yet few are under such frontal assault.” I penned those words 14 years ago, when I and my colleagues on the Federal Communications Commission were considering how best to protect telephone customers from expansive snooping and intrusive marketing practices. Today, I must reiterate this sentiment, and urge the FCC to immediately pass strong new rules to protect the privacy of broadband customers.

Broadband privacy is important for many of the same reasons that the FCC has ensured the privacy of telephone customers for decades. Broadband Internet service providers (ISPs) collect extensive information about all of their customers, including location, web browsing and app use history, when and with whom they communicate, and even the content of those communications. In short, nearly everything a consumer does online is visible to his or her ISP. ISPs need some of that information to provide service, but they also can exploit private details for profit, primarily through marketing. The FCC recently released a fact sheet on broadband privacy, and while it is a significant step forward, there remains the possibility that that intra-agency negotiations might consider alterations that would water-down the privacy regime and leave consumers without needed protections. The need of the hour is to strengthen, not weaken, the pending proposal. The FCC should adopt opt-in rules that more closely hew to Congress’s direction in Section 222 of the Communications Act that make clear telecommunications carriers have a duty to protect confidentiality of the proprietary information of their customers.

[Michael Copps is a retired FCC Commissioner, special advisor for Common Cause's Media and Democracy Reform Initiative, and contributor to the Benton Foundation's Digital Beat Blog.]