Congress sends White
House repeal of broadband privacy rules
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[March 29, 2017]
By David Shepardson
WASHINGTON
(Reuters) - The U.S. House voted on Tuesday 215-205 to repeal
regulations requiring internet service providers to do more to protect
customers' privacy than websites like Alphabet Inc's Google or Facebook
Inc.
The White House said earlier Tuesday that President Donald Trump
strongly supports the repeal of the rules approved by the Federal
Communications Commission in October under then-President Barack Obama.
Under the rules, internet providers would need to obtain consumer
consent before using precise geolocation, financial information, health
information, children's information and web browsing history for
advertising and marketing.
Last week, the Senate voted 50-48 to reverse the rules in a win for AT&T
Inc, Comcast Corp and Verizon Communications Inc.
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The White House in its statement said internet providers would need to
obtain affirmative "opt-in" consent from consumers to use and share
certain information, but noted that websites are not required to get the
same consent. "This results in rules that apply very different
regulatory regimes based on the identity of the online actor," the White
House said.
Websites are governed by a less restrictive set of privacy rules
overseen by the Federal Trade Commission.
FCC chairman Ajit Pai in a statement praised the decision of Congress to
overturn "privacy regulations designed to benefit one group of favored
companies over another group of disfavored companies." Last week, Pai
said consumers would have privacy protections even without the Obama
internet provider rules, but critics say they will weaker.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which opposes the measure, said
companies "should not be able to use and sell the sensitive data they
collect from you without your permission."
An Internet & Television Association statement called the repeal "an
important step toward restoring consumer privacy protections that apply
consistently."
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An illustration picture shows a network cable next to a pack of
smartphones in Berlin, June 7, 2013. REUTERS/Pawel Kopczynski
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One
critic of the repeal, Craig Aaron, president of Free Press advocacy group, said
major Silicon Valley companies shied away from the fight over the rules because
they profit from consumer data.
"There
are a lot of companies that are very concerned about drawing attention to
themselves and being regulated on privacy issues, and are sitting this out in a
way that they haven’t sat out previous privacy issues," Aaron said.
Representative Michael Capuano, a Massachusetts Democrat, said Tuesday that
Comcast could know his personal information because he looked up his mother's
medical condition and his purchase history. "Just last week I bought underwear
on the internet. Why should you know what size I take? Or the color?" Capuano
asked. "They are going to sell it to the underwear companies."
Comcast declined to comment.
Representative Michael Burgess, a Texas Republican, said the rules "unfairly
skews the market in favor" of websites that are free to collect data without
consent.
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Republican commissioners, including Pai, said in October that the rules would
unfairly give websites like Facebook, Twitter Inc or Google the ability to
harvest more data than internet service providers and thus further dominate
digital advertising. The FCC earlier this month delayed the data rules from
taking effect.
(Reporting by David Shepardson. Additional reporting by David Ingram and Stephen
Nellis in San Francisco; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Grant McCool)
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