Elizabeth Warren Pushes FCC For Broadband Privacy Rules

With the FCC's net neutrality rules now on more solid ground, the agency expects to begin work on crafting some basic privacy rules for broadband. With ISPs now classified as common carriers under Title II of the Telecommunications Act, they're governed by some antiquated phone regulations governing the use of Customer Proprietary Network Information (CPNI). The FCC is looking to update those rules to protect broadband subscribers, after several key privacy violations by ISPs over the last few years.

One of them was AT&T and Verizon's decision to begin embedding stealth tracking headers into user wireless packets to not only track user behavior around the Internet, but help build consumer behavior profiles.

The FCC was also nudged to action presumably by AT&T's decision to charge U-Verse broadband customers a steep premium if they want to opt out of AT&T's deep packet inspection snoopvertising, something that effectively made privacy a premium option.

The FCC's also likely motivated by Cable One's recent admission that it actually gives worst customer service to customers with a poor credit rating.

In a letter (pdf) to the FCC this week, Senator Elizabeth Warren gave her support to the FCC's plan, at one point seemingly singling out AT&T or CableOne's behavior.

"The absence of clear and strong rules for BIAS providers has resulted in a host of dubious practices that endanger consumers' privacy, and I am particularly concerned about new business models that single out low-income consumers for differential treatment with regard to their privacy and the use of their financial and other personal data," Warren said.

"Privacy is not a luxury good reserved only for the wealthy," the Senator argued. "And we should not allow BIAS providers to extort consumers who want to control how their personal information is used and shared when they use essential communications services."

Unsurprisingly, broadband ISPs have tried to argue that consumer broadband privacy protections will hurt consumers, and that they aren't necessary because there's been no proof of consumer harm (despite the obvious cases outlined above).

"The proposed rules will not provide meaningful consumer Internet privacy protections, and will block ISPs from bringing new competition to the online advertising market that could benefit consumers," Comcast's top lobbyist said earlier this year in a blog post. Cohen didn't really explain what said benefits might be, but called the FCC's plan "irrational" and "an unjustified set of regulatory shackles on ISPs."

Verizon too has historically fought consumer privacy protections. In 2008, Verizon tried to argue that such rules weren't necessary because "public shame" would keep the company honest. In 2015 it was revealed that Verizon had been covertly tracking its wireless users by manipulating user packets , something it took two years for security researchers to even notice -- seemingly deflating Verizon's argument.