FCC To Finally Probe U.S. Wireless Abuse Of Customer Location Data
from the collect-ALL-the-things! dept
We’ve noted for years how your mobile phone location data is routinely abused by a long list of bad actors, including your wireless carrier. We’ve also noted how the GOP Senate, hand in hand with the telecom sector, managed to kill FCC broadband privacy guidelines in 2017 that would have gone a long way in protecting consumer data in the post-Roe landscape.
With that as backdrop, the FCC announced last week that it would take a closer look at U.S. wireless carrier abuse of location data:
The FCC has sent letters to most major U.S. wireless carriers asking them to detail the entire scope of their wireless location data collection procedures, including how much data is collected, how it’s stored, and which organizations and companies it’s collected by, transferred, and sold to. The inquiry comes on the heels of an FTC report showing the rampant and unaccountable data collection by the telecom sector.
Activists for years have warned about the obvious threat of over-collection and sharing of sensitive consumer wireless location data, be it gleaned from your mobile phone or apps. Now, post-Roe, it’s all but guaranteed this and other data (search histories, app usage) is going to be used by states (and potentially vigilantes, since this data is often easy to purchase) looking to target abortion seekers and those who help them.
This is, of course, a pretty deep rabbit hole. Most companies claim that collecting this data isn’t a big deal because it’s “anonymized,” despite the fact that studies keep showing that word means nothing. Telecom giants often claim they don’t sell this kind of data, but that’s generally found to be a lie (they just call the practice of bundling and transferring and selling it to others something else).
How much the FCC can do here is of question. A good chunk of the agency’s privacy rulemaking authority was stripped away when the GOP and telecom sector gutted FCC broadband privacy rules in 2017. But they can still bring some transparency to the proceedings.
That should be good news to Trump appointed FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr, who has been breathlessly concerned about the abuse of user location data (albeit only when TikTok and China do it). As noted then, you can’t fight against oversight of the entire adtech and telecom snoopvertising apparatus as Carr does, then get singularly upset only when China abuses the broken system you helped build.
To actually fix this mess you need transparency and accountability for all companies and industries, and some well-written (I know that’s a big ask) privacy guidelines for the Internet era that prioritize market health and consumer safety over making money (also a very big ask).
Filed Under: abortion, brendan carr, fcc, jessica rosenworcel, location data, privacy, surveillance, tracking
Comments on “FCC To Finally Probe U.S. Wireless Abuse Of Customer Location Data”
Alongside harsh penalties, the threat of dissolving the business entity (or worse), and if possible, actually arresting the CEO and the Board of Directors at the very least.
They sure as fuck ain’t gonna care otherwise.
what a shame she seems to refuse to get her backside in gear and stop customers being totally abused by the telecom/broadband companies! after those companies got their ali, Ajit Pai to reverse, dismiss, cancel what was in place to make these companies ‘toe the line’ and protected customers, Rosenworcel has done precious little to things away from the grubby little hands of the likes of Verizon and Comcast, allowing them to screw customers with unprecedented fees and even more of a completely PISS-POOR service, in all respects!! she may as well not be there!!
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Ah, another “Let’s Go, Brandon” flunky. That’s fine, because I needed to sell some of my popcorn today.
(Note to OP: Hope you’re all stocked up on K-Y, ’cause it’s comin’ in, baby!)
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There you are–always lurking in the back of the theater.
Security! That’s not popcorn in this guys bucket!
Trolls like you so obvious.
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Trolls like you so obvious.
Takes one to know one, I guess.
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what a shame she seems to refuse to get her backside in gear and stop customers being totally abused by the telecom/broadband companies!
Well, those are certainly words you can string together. Where have you been the last 10 years?
she may as well not be there!!
Nor anyone else. Nor the missing person to fill the vacancy. That’s the whole idea.
But sure, blame Jessica Rosenworcel. Whatever.
Rosenworcel is a bit late to this game–and she will have zero meaningful effect, because the (D) and (R) bipolar’s have been blackmailing each other with Big Data for two decades. Its what Fusion Center’s do too.
These political hacks are one minute, on about “privacy rights and free speech,” and in the next breath the scummy Lockheed defense contractor or Big Data pimp sidles up and whispers in their ear, and they are ready to start lining folks up against a wall for any talk about those same scurillous “rights.”
It happened in Denmark too, but most rational people already knew this was going on already.
Data acquired by the NSA has been used to convince the Danish government to buy fighter jets from Lockheed-Martin
Convince is such a weasel word, ay?
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And of course you put the word “rights” in scare quotes when discussing them because you and your Chinese paymasters don’t believe people have them.
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Wrong again, IfS troll–as I said multiple times, I have met or know some of these people in meatspace.
You and your “handler’s” not so much.
But the far more interesting thing is how you appear to be able to edit your own comments at the exact moment as I send mine–erasing your own previous comment about your support for the Azov battalion, and then, erasing your internet trail, superficially(screencapped tho) and the comment above appears.
THAT is a skill set I do not have, nor is it a tool I posses for the moment, TBH.
But such ability is really cool–TD mod’s be like “how did Thing 1 do that!?”
Incredulous myself, TBH.
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This is just classic “Thing 1” trolling:
No one that I know is scared of rights–but we are all aware of how you, and others like you, poison the dialogues about rights at the internet switch. See my comment above about “what you did there.”
Pretty advanced ADL-Institute for Statecraft/NATO type stuff on your end.