Recent Court Cases Shows Need for Firm FCC Stand on ISP Privacy, Public Interest Groups Say
Officials from various public interest groups, in a meeting with an aide to Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, pressed for quick FCC action on ISP privacy rules. The groups cited a recent 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' ruling that the FTC…
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had no jurisdiction over AT&T in a data throttling case as evidence of the need for FCC rules (see 1608290032 and 1608300055). “To the extent ISP arguments are based on the effectiveness of FTC guidance, frameworks, and oversight in protecting against reidentification of deidentified datasets, those arguments are undermined" by the 9th Circuit decision, said a filing posted Tuesday in docket 16-106. “The 9th Circuit stated that the common carrier exemption to Section 5 of the FTC Act is a status-based exemption, and therefore the FTC cannot enforce against companies with the status of common carrier, like AT&T Mobility. Thus, the FTC does not provide a backstop for baseline privacy protections, reinforcing the need for strong FCC-imposed privacy rules now.” The letter was signed by the Institute for Public Representation at Georgetown Law and New America’s Open Technology Institute, and included a letter last week (see 1609080054) from many groups like Center for Digital Democracy, Consumer Federation of America, Demand Progress, Electronic Frontier Foundation and Free Press.