GOP warns against proposed Internet privacy rules

In a letter to the Federal Communications Commission, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton, R-Mich., and other GOP lawmakers criticized the FCC’s proposed privacy and data breach notification requirements on broadband Internet service providers.

“Ultimately, the FCC’s proposal for new … privacy rules seems to miss the point,” the lawmakers wrote in the letter. “Rather than serve the public interest, these new rules will create public confusion. Consumers will bear the impact of delayed innovation, consumers will suffer from deferred deployment and consumers will suffer from inefficient design as companies seek to avoid a more burdensome and costly privacy regime.”

The FCC in March proposed significant and sweeping changes to privacy and data security rules for broadband providers. If enacted, they would require broadband companies to win consumer consent, or an “opt in,” before they can use or share consumer data.

The proposed rules would also set a 10-day deadline for broadband companies to notify customers of a discovered breach. Currently, there is no federal law requiring companies to let customers know they have been hacked.

Upton and other GOP critics of the proposed rule told the FCC that it should abandon the proposal and instead follow the Federal Trade Commission, which used one set of rules for all Internet providers.

The FCC voted to propose the new rules in March. The 3-2 vote was along partisan lines, and Republican appointees to the commission voted against them.

Commissioner Ajit Pai, in a minority statement, called the proposal an “illogically slanted regulation.”

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, an Obama administration appointee, said the rules “would give all consumers the tools we need to make informed decisions about how our ISPs use and share our data, and confidence that ISPs are keeping their customers’ data secure.”