FCC Rule Repeal Won’t Kill Privacy Protections

[Commentary] When it comes to using your data from Web browsing and app usage, the Federal Trade Commission has been the regulatory cop on the beat. Determined to be relevant in the digital economy, the Federal Communications Commission created its own, radically different set of privacy regulations targeting just Internet service providers. By requiring an Internet service provider’s customers to give permission for their data to be used, the FCC’s new privacy rules subject ISPs to a different and more restrictive set of regulations than their online advertising rivals.

If and when the FCC’s new privacy rules are overruled, the statute that empowers the agency to police privacy abuses by ISPs will still apply. And nothing prevents the FCC from designing a different (and more symmetric) regulatory standard. Repeal of the FCC’s new rules will simply restore the regulatory environment that existed for more than 18 months between its reclassification decision and its privacy rules. Given the myriad layers of protections and regulatory options, the notion that repeal would leave the ISPs without any privacy regulator is patently false.

[Hal Singer is a principal at Economists Incorporated and a senior fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute.]