After Congress repealed the FCC’s broadband privacy rules two weeks ago, new FCC chairman Ajit Pai promised the American people that he would ensure that the personal information they give to their ISPs would continue to be protected. Pai said that he planned to work with the Federal Trade Commission to “restore the FTC’s authority to police internet service providers’ privacy practices.”
But this plan will not only fail to provide effective broadband privacy protections, it will come at the cost of eliminating the FCC’s net neutrality rules that prohibit ISPs like Comcast and AT&T from picking winners and losers on the internet. And there’s a real chance the FTC actually won’t be able to regulate ISPs at all.
How the FTC can police internet providers
The FTC currently lacks the legal authority to oversee any unfair and deceptive ISP practices, including privacy, because of a part of the Federal Trade Commission Act known as the “common carrier exemption.”
A common carrier is a service that carries traffic without discrimination or interference, like telephone service. Prior to 2002, the FTC didn’t police either telephone companies or ISPs. In 2002, a determination by George W. Bush’s FCC that ISPs were not common carriers brought them within the scope of the FTC’s authority. Then, the Obama FCC’s 2015 decision to reclassify ISPs as common carriers put ISPs back under FCC oversight — the decision that also enabled the FCC to adopt the strongest-ever net neutrality rules as well as protect consumers from fraudulent billing, price gouging, and other harmful ISP practices.
More:
http://www.theverge.com/2017/4/11/15258230/net-neutrality-privacy-ajit-pai-fcc
