{"id":340116,"date":"2017-05-05T04:21:21","date_gmt":"2017-05-04T20:21:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techcrunch.com\/?p=1485616"},"modified":"2017-05-05T04:21:21","modified_gmt":"2017-05-04T20:21:21","slug":"who-needs-the-fcc-seattle-writes-its-own-broadband-privacy-rule","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/who-needs-the-fcc-seattle-writes-its-own-broadband-privacy-rule\/","title":{"rendered":"Who needs the FCC? Seattle writes its own broadband privacy rule"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Hardly anyone was pleased by the rollback of the broadband privacy rule last month, opening up the possibility of ISPs collecting and selling your browsing data \u2014 including, as it turns out, cities whose citizens were left out in the cold. Seattle wasted no time taking matters into their own hands, and the result is a local rule<\/a> that provides a few of the repealed one\u2019s critical protections.<\/p>\n

The FCC\u2019s broadband privacy rule<\/a> would have boosted requirements for transparency and security practices \u2014 and more importantly would have added browsing history to the list of \u201ccustomer proprietary information\u201d and required ISPs to get advance permission from consumers to track and sell it.<\/p>\n

Of course, it was never allowed to take effect. Seattle\u2019s response was swift; I talked with the city\u2019s CTO, Michael Mattmiller, about what happened next.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the president and Congress repealed the rule, the mayor directed us to look for authority the city already had to restore \u2014 or perhaps not restore, but make a rule like it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The city found its authority in the municipal code governing cable franchises; the rules on the books are mostly about TV service, but setting \u201cprivacy standards for subscribers of cable service and other services provided over the cable system\u201d seems well within the mandate.<\/p>\n

The new rule was added yesterday; it requires cable internet providers to obtain opt-in consent before using web browsing history or other internet usage data for its own purposes.<\/p>\n

Internet providers have occasionally protested that they don\u2019t do that kind of thing anyway.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe say that\u2019s great, but we still think there should be a rule. Trust, but verify \u2014 that\u2019s our mantra,\u201d Mattmiller said. \u201cISPs don\u2019t want to be treated different from Google, Facebook, Amazon and other tech companies. But we believe that a consumer\u2019s relationship with their ISP is fundamentally different from other services or websites.\u201d<\/p>\n

In addition to getting opt-ins from consumers, ISPs would have to provide their privacy statement to city authorities for inspection yearly, and if they do any aggregating and anonymizing of data, provide their methods and reasons for doing so.<\/p>\n

The rule affects Comcast, CenturyLink and local ISP Wave; these three account for a large majority of broadband subscribers in the city. ISPs that do wireless or satellite connections technically aren\u2019t bound by the cable rules, so they\u2019re unaffected for now \u2014 unless, Mattmiller joked, they volunteer to submit themselves to the new regulation.<\/p>\n

May 24 is the deadline for compliance with the rules, so if you\u2019re in Seattle (like me), one of two things will happen. You might<\/em> receive an update from your internet provider asking you to opt into their data collection scheme. But you also might not, which either indicates that the ISP doesn\u2019t have a scheme like that, or decided to shut it down before the 24th. Sounds good to me either way.<\/p>\n

Featured Image: Andrew E. Larsen<\/a>\/Shutterstock<\/a> UNDER A CC BY-ND 2.0<\/a> LICENSE<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"\" Hardly anyone was pleased by the rollback of the broadband privacy rule last month, opening up the possibility of ISPs collecting and selling your browsing data — including, as it turns out, cities whose citizens were left out in the cold. Seattle wasted no time taking matters into their own hands, and the result is a local rule that provides a few of the repealed one’s critical… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n

\"\"\/ <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5817,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[59,66,26],"class_list":["post-340116","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-media","tag-techcrunch","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340116","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5817"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=340116"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/340116\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=340116"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=340116"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=340116"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}