FCC Chairman Wheeler Launches Broadband Privacy Discussion

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler called the broadband privacy workshop the commission hosted on April 28 the beginning of a very important discussion. The FCC is trying to decide how to regulate broadband CPNI (customer proprietary network information), now that it has reclassified Internet service providers as telecommunications out of the reach of the Federal Trade Commission, which is now prevented from exercising authority given common carrier exemption. Chairman Wheeler said that the issue falls under a broader one, which is the basic concept that "changes in technology don't change our values." He said that privacy is unassailable and how the FCC deals with it is what makes the issue and the era so challenging, but exciting at the same time.

Chairman Wheeler detoured a few centuries to point out that Alexander Hamilton was concerned about the mail being compromised as he and the founding fathers were hammering out the Federalist Papers, then jumped to the Civil War to talk about Rebels cutting the telegraph wires -- Chairman Wheeler wrote a book about Lincoln's use of the telegraph during the war -- and putting the wires to their tongues to sense the pulses and hack the messages. But he returned to the present day to make the point that the issues were not new, and that in this era increasingly the information and the networks are becoming increasingly synonymous. Chairman Wheeler said Congress was explicit in its instructions to the FCC, which was that consumers have the right to expect privacy of the information network collect about them. The FCC has been overseeing that CPNI relationship when it comes to phone, including VoIP, and traditional video -- VOD records, for example -- but broadband CPNI is new territory. Chairman Wheeler said that in a digital world, everyone leaves digital footprints "all over the place."