Rights Groups Push For Strong Broadband Privacy Rules (reuters.com)

An anonymous reader writes: A coalition of rights groups has sent a letter to the U.S. Federal Communications Commission asking for tougher privacy regulations on providers of broadband internet services. The letter was sent by the ACLU, the EFF, Public Citizen, and over 50 other groups. "Critics say broadband providers are already harvesting huge amounts of consumer data for use in targeted advertising, the groups wrote. 'This can create a chilling effect on speech and increase the potential for discriminatory practices derived from data use,' the letter said." FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has said such firms need to ensure their data is protected, and that consumers should know more about what data is being collected, but he hasn't addressed whether the data should be harvested in the first place. He expects the FCC to review these practices "in the next several months."

Comments

HTTPS Privacy Rules

[WhiteKnight07]

HTTPS is the only real answer. Rules like what are being proposed are hard to enforce. But properly implemented authentication and encryption will make such rules unnecessary.

Damn straight

[Just Some Guy]

I'm a Verizon cell customer. They added an opt-out "feature" where they'd track all web traffic, so I opted out. Six months later, I found through a news story that they'd silently added another opt-out tracking feature which didn't obey the earlier misfeature's disable flag. So now I pay Verizon for my phone data, and pay a VPN service for the right to browse the Internet without my own damn ISP spying on me.

No, I can't easily switch providers - my family's phones aren't all AT&T-compatible, and T-Mobile doesn't have good coverage in some of the places we visit often. But more to the point, I shouldn't have to.

I offer another proposal to Chairman Wheeler: allow the carriers to choose between common carrier status (with all its legal protections) and, what, data portal status maybe (with zero liability protections for transmitted content). If Verizon, Comcast, et al want to snoop traffic, then they should be legally on the hook for the content of that traffic. If they don't want to be liable for every possible copyright violation or prohibited content flowing through their network, then they damn well better choose to be dumb pipes.