Verizon Actually Just Stood Up For Your Privacy For Once

For years, incumbent telcos like AT&T and Verizon quickly yelled "how high?" when asked by law enforcement or the intelligence community to help them hoover up consumer data. In fact, both companies often went well beyond what was asked of them, AT&T getting busted at one point giving the NSA direct access to absolutely every shred of data that touched the telco's network. AT&T's enthusiasm ran so deep, the company was also caught advising government on the best way to skirt privacy and wiretap law.

But with Verizon now trying to focus more on media and advertising, at least one of these telcos appears to be slightly shifting their positions.

Verizon was one of several companies last week (including Google, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft) to inform the US government it's leaning too heavily on outdated laws from the 1970s to justify Fourth Amendment overreach. More specifically, Verizon is joining a chorus of experts, academics and companies opposing the government in the case of Carpenter v. United States, a case which focuses on whether the government can obtain your cell phone location data without a warrant.

The case is “one of the most important Fourth Amendment cases in recent memory,” Craig Silliman, Verizon’s executive vice president for public policy and general counsel, said in a post on LinkedIn. “Although the specific issue presented to the Court is about location information, the case presents a broader issue about a customer’s reasonable expectation of privacy for other types of sensitive data she shares with any third party.… Our hope is that when it decides this case, the Court will help us better apply old Fourth Amendment doctrines to an evolving digital era.”

Verizon's not just being altruistic here. The company is trying hard to pivot from stodgy old telco to Millennial-focused advertising via its acquisitions of both AOL and Yahoo -- so far with very mixed results. As such, the impression that it actual values protecting consumer privacy is a profitable brand move.

"At the end of the day, a company like Verizon isn’t going to stick its neck out if it doesn’t think that there’s a business rationale in addition to it being the right thing to do," ACLU lawyer Nathan Freed Wessler told Wired.

That said, Verizon still has an arguably atrocious track record on this subject. From its recent lobbying efforts to dismantle relatively basic FCC broadband privacy protections , to the time it was busted covertly modifying user packets to track users around the 'net without their consent, Verizon has a long way to go before earning the public's trust on this particular subject.