ISPs' Data About Consumers Is Worth 'A King's Ransom,' Privacy Guru Says

Broadband providers have spent months complaining that proposed new privacy rules would unfairly subject them to more stringent privacy rules than Google, Facebook or other online companies. Today, privacy guru and law professor Paul Ohm -- an outspoken proponent of tough privacy rules -- answers that objection. Internet service providers, Ohm says, should have to follow tough standards because ISPs pose a greater threat to privacy than other companies. "Your ISP is the mandatory first hop to the rest of the Internet, and everything you do while connected to a particular ISP flows first through its servers," he writes in a post at Benton Foundation. "Your ISP can develop a nearly-comprehensive picture of what you do that other companies would pay a king’s ransom to be able to access."