Privacy

One gets what one rewards and tolerates.

U.S. Internet law and policy, which exempts and immunizes Internet platforms from most normal social responsibility and government accountability, has created a de facto anti-social contract with the American people; a cheaters charter for Internet platforms; and an increasingly corrosive culture of unaccountability.

Inputs drive outputs. Favoring unaccountability, favors irresponsibility.

This latest Facebook fiasco is just the latest in a long series of Internet-unaccountability wake-up calls for Congress.

The problem here is not tech, technology, the Internet, or a business model. They are mere tools that can be used for good or for bad.

The problem here is Congress predicated 1996 U.S. Internet law and policy on the implicit utopian ideal and naïve presumption that Internet technologies and businesses would only be forces for social good and not harm.

U.S. Internet policy politics has shifted.

Congress has learned that any new legal accountability for, or regulation of, Internet platforms likely won’t survive court challenge, unless the new legislation also amends a 1996 law, Section 230, that selectively immunizes Internet platforms from most government legal accountability, and federal and state regulation.

Courts have interpreted Section 230 so broadly that Internet platforms like Facebook, Alphabet-Google, Amazon, Uber, and Airbnb, grew confident that they could operate their businesses largely above the rules and outside the law that applied to everyone else.

The proof of this "Jekyll and Hyde" legal double standard, is that this week Congress had to amend section 230 to narrowly override its sweeping Internet platform immunity powers to legally enable child victims of sex trafficking to seek redress for their harms in court.

Yesterday the Senate passed FOSTA, the “Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act,” with 97% support (97-2). Three weeks ago, the House passed it with 94% support, (388-25). Both passed over the strong opposition of Alphabet-Google and some other members of the Internet Association. President Trump is expected to quickly sign it into law.

Americans believe in equal accountability, that no one should be above rules or outside the law.

Then why are America’s only unaccountable network monopolies, Alphabet-Google, Facebook, and Amazon, calling for maximal accountability of utility-grade, network-neutrality regulation for their ISP competitors, but no accountability for their own apparent utility-like, monopoly distribution networks?

Summary

More change is coming to the FTC than most appreciate.

That’s because the FTC is in the process of an unprecedented, clean-slate leadership change, at the same time society is undergoing an extraordinary inflection point – the “techlash.”  

In a nutshell, the evidence to date shows the eventual Simons-FTC is on path to be a tough, bipartisan, populist, by-the-book, enforcer of antitrust and consumer protection laws. That would be in stark contrast to, the “laxter” enforcement and apparent Google-capture, of the 2012-2017 Ramirez-FTC, and the current, sidelined, no-quorum, Ohlhausen-FTC. 

SUMMARY

What could possibly go wrong with a nationalized, dual-use, military-civilian, secure 5G wireless network to centralize all military and civilian U.S. transportation traffic control and management with Alphabet-Google as the only commercial wireless ISP “financing/anchor tenant?” Way too much.

Please see PBS NewsHour’s five minute segment here with Gigi Sohn and I discussing Congress’ rescission of the FCC’s unimplemented broadband privacy order that the Wheeler-FCC majority passed last October by a 3-2 vote.

Please see my latest The Hill op-ed: “Congress was right to save consumers from privacy rules imposed under net neutrality.”

Consumer privacy has been the biggest loser from net neutrality proponents’ politicization of privacy.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, March 23, 2017, Contact:  Scott Cleland 703-217-2407

Senate CRA Vote Rescinding FCC’s Broadband Privacy Order Paves Way for House Passage and Has Congress Prioritizing Consumer Privacy Protection Over Net Neutrality

WASHINGTON D.C. – The following may be attributed to Scott Cleland, Chairman of NetCompetition:

 “The CRA was made for correcting big agency mistakes just like the FCC’s Broadband Privacy Order, which made consumer privacy protection worse not better, because it prioritized technology over people, net neutrality over consumer privacy protection, the FCC over the FTC, and the interests of edge platforms over the interests of American consumers.”

“The most embarrassing part of the FCC’s broadband privacy order is that it does not really protect consumers’ privacy at all. That’s because effectively it only requires ISPs to keep certain information private when every other entity on the Internet does not have to keep private that exact same information.”

Please see my The Hill op-ed on: “Consumer privacy is more important than net neutrality.”

Please don’t miss my latest The Hill op-ed, “Congress Please Undo FCC’s Dysfunctional Internet Privacy Rules,” which explains how these last minute regulations created a confusing mess for consumers.