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Terminal week, news broke that AT&T, Dart, and T-Mobile have all been continuing to sell location data to third-political party data brokers, ultimately allowing the data to fall into the hands of bounty hunters, who tin apply these databases to rail people in existent-time for dollars a day. The news was especially explosive given that the carriers had previously pledged to cease using data for this purpose and to wind down such programs.

After the news broke, Frank Pallone, Chair of the Firm Committee on Free energy and Commerce, requested an emergency briefing from Pai on the topic, request to know why the FCC "has even so to cease wireless carriers' unauthorized disclosure of consumers' real-time location data." Telephone carriers are legally required to protect Customer Proprietary Network Information (CPNI), which includes location data. The FCC is therefore nevertheless legally immune to monitor and hold companies responsible for protecting this information, fifty-fifty though the 2017 broadband privacy rules passed by the previous FCC chair, Thomas Wheeler, have been repealed.

The FCC'south response? "Nah."

"Today, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai refused to cursory Energy and Commerce Committee staff on the existent-time tracking of cell phone location, as reported by Motherboard terminal week," Pallone said in an emailed statement. "In a telephone conversation today, his staff asserted that these egregious actions are not a threat to the safety of homo life or property that the FCC will address during the Trump shutdown."

On the 1 paw, the FCC has a genuine indicate. These are not issues that threaten life and limb the fashion that certain other topics could. Carriers' continued hemorrhaging of consumer data — the companies in question have now pledged to stop in March, having previously promised to stop by the stop of the yr — does not necessarily represent the kind of threat that is contemplated by the orders limiting the role of the regime in a shutdown scenario.

TechnicallyCorrect

But this kind of apartment refusal would undoubtedly play ameliorate if Pai's FCC had shown much concern for the privacy of Americans to begin with. According to the FCC, it has been investigating carrier treatment of location information and will be happy to return to that investigation as presently as the regime re-opens.

One FCC Commissioner, Jessica Rosenworcel, indicated she would be willing to testify to Congress despite the shutdown. No law prevents the FCC from coming together with Congress on the topic during the shutdown, and the decision to refuse to do so, ultimately, is upwards to the FCC. As a minority member of the FCC (Rosenworcel is one of the Democrats on the console), she would not take access to the total set of information that Pai has, yet.

Pai's tenure at the FCC has not been marked with any detail concern for citizens' privacy rights or rights in general. In add-on to pushing to ringlet back before privacy legislation, he's changed the FCC's process for handling informal complaints, making it more than likely that citizens will need to pay a $225 fee to file a formal complaint before the FCC will investigate a problem. He's also proposed heavily criticized changes to the Lifeline program that helps poor people purchase phone and internet service that could crusade up to 70 pct of subscribers to lose their coverage. The FCC claims that blocking bulk resellers from participating in Lifeline will encourage other carriers to step upwards and provide these services. The actual companies responsible for providing said service, like Verizon and the manufacture trade group CTIA, have both lobbied the FCC not to gut the program, noting that the proposed changes would "negatively impact millions of low-income consumers who rely on wireless supported lifeline services."

One can easily fence that Pai is demonstrating the same concern for citizen privacy and rights that he's held throughout his tenure to-date. On the other hand, i can besides argue that the purpose of a government shutdown is just that — to close downwards the government. Ane of the paradoxes of a shutdown situation is that finding ways to maintain (semi)-regular club despite the shutdown tin can make the shutdown elevate on longer precisely considering it relieves pressure to resume regular orders of business. 1 doesn't take to concur with either side in any given shutdown fight to come across the logic at work. If you desire to encourage the two sides in the debate to reach a resolution and reopen the government, the best style to accomplish it may be to make the shutdown as painful every bit possible. Wanting answers from the FCC over how carriers have been immune to drag their collective feet when it comes to shutting downward information access isn't likely to move the ball on the overall shutdown fight — but it emphasizes the point that the government isn't supposed to be open for business in the first place and increases the pressure on legislators and the President to find a solution.

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