In a rather alarming admission on Friday, the FCC said that it couldn’t force Internet companies, including giants and huge collectors of personal data like Google and Facebook, to stop tracking their users and their online behavior.
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“The Commission has been unequivocal in declaring that it has no intent to regulate edge providers”, reads the order. And according to the Federal Communications Commission, they’re requests that don’t have to be, and often aren’t, honored. “If the Commission does not act to regulate the collection of personal information by edge providers, the Commission will in effect be granting a regulatory advantage to the edge providers, implicating concerns of market distortions”.
Earlier this year, advocacy group Consumer Watchdog petitioned the FCC to push for technology that allows users to give websites a notification that they do not want their information to be tracked.
“We believe the FCC has the authority to enforce Internet privacy protections far more broadly than they have opted to do and are obviously disappointed by this decision”, said the group’s Privacy Project director John Simpson in a statement. Consumer Watchdog’s petition cites FCC authority under another law to take immediate action to protect consumer privacy if it finds broadband is not being deployed in a timely fashion.
Consumer Watchdog expects to take an active role in the FCC rulemaking that will create Section 222 privacy rules covering the broadband Internet access providers.
“It’s outrageous that users of Google and Facebook, which has a billion users, won’t have the same online privacy protections as AT&T and Verizon”, Jamie Court, president of Consumer Watchdog, told Reuters. It happens each and every time you surf the web, and it’s going to keep happening, even if you’ve enabled that feel-good “Do Not Track” setting in your browser that most websites and online services ignore.
“Quoting Consumer Watchdog, the FCC said, “‘Protecting the authorized use of consumers” personal information by requiring edge providers to honor “Do Not Track’ Requests’ is inconsistent with the Commission’s articulation of the effect of its reclassification of [broadband internet access services] and the scope of the privacy practices … it intends to address”.
With the FCC having made this decision, this strikes a huge blow to privacy advocates, who had been lobbying that the agency impose stricter Internet privacy regulations.
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“Acting to ensure consumers” privacy while they use the Internet is one of the immediate steps the Commission should take to bolster the rate of broadband adoption”, the petition said.
