Congress Says The FCC Is Trying To Run Out The Clock On Wireless Location Data Scandals

from the whoo-needs-accountability dept

US wireless carriers have spent much of the last year under fire for hoovering up your location data, then selling that data to any nitwit with a nickel. More recently they've been busted even selling access to E-911 location data, which is increasingly even more accurate in tracking users than traditional GPS. We've noted repeatedly that lax ethical standards result in this data often being abused by dubious third parties, or used illegally by law enforcement or those pretending to be law enforcement.

Throughout these evolving scandals, the Trump FCC hasn't done anything to ensure the public this is being adequately looked into. There's been no critical statement about this practice issued by the FCC, and despite some early hints at a potential investigation, there's been zero public traction of any kind. Last week, some lawmakers wrote to the FCC boss Ajit Pai calling him out for doing nothing in response to the scandal:

"We write regarding our growing concern that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is failing in its duty to enforce the laws Congress passed to protect consumers’ privacy. This Committee has repeatedly urged you to act quickly to protect consumers’ privacy interests, and unfortunately you have failed to do so."

The apathy is particularly interesting given the Trump administration's frequent hyperventilation on privacy when it's Facebook or some other, large Silicon Valley giant in the crosshairs. Given the FCC hasn't done much of anything about other major scandals haunting the telecom sector (like SIM hijacking leading to cryptocurrency theft), this kind of apathy toward telecom misbehavior isn't surprising. But when it comes to the location data scandals, lawmakers suggest the FCC is trying to run out the clock so that wireless carriers can't be held accountable under FCC guidelines:

"Despite announcing that it began an investigation into the wireless carriers after being made aware of the allegations in 2018, the FCC has failed, to date, to take any action. And now time is running out since the statute of limitations gives the FCC one year to act. We write regarding our growing concern that the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is failing in its duty to enforce the laws Congress passed to protect consumers’ privacy. This Committee has repeatedly urged you to act quickly to protect consumers’ privacy interests, and unfortunately you have failed to do so."

While wireless carriers have insisted they've stopped collecting and selling this data, nobody has bothered to actually independently confirm that. Nobody's really been able to answer what happens to the troves of location data these companies have been collecting for the better part of the last decade, either. Have carriers really stopped monetizing your every waking movement? Are they still monetizing a decade's worth of your daily habits? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Like so many tech policy issues (net neutrality comes quickly to mind), this will be idiotically framed as a "he said, she said" partisan issue by lawmakers and many media outlets, resulting in the Republican FCC only doubling down on what they'll insist is "unfair partisan criticism." But that doesn't really address the fact that we're doing little to nothing about one of the biggest privacy scandals in the last decade. Nor does it really speak to the fact that when it comes to consumer privacy, the telecom sector is every bit as terrible as giants like Facebook -- which now enjoy a myopic level of consternation in the DC policy space to the exclusion of all else.

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Filed Under: ajit pai, fcc, location data, privacy