With a deadline for public comment quickly approaching, critics are charging that regulators on the Federal Communications Commission are trying to suppress debate in a rush to impose new privacy rules on broadband providers.
“Comments are the public’s one opportunity to influence the actions of a powerful, but unelected and, largely, unaccountable agency,” a coalition of 30 groups said in a letter delivered to the agency late on Friday. “When that opportunity is stifled or restricted, steps must be taken to ensure that voices of Americans are sufficiently heard in the context of FCC proceedings.”
The coalition, which includes organizations like the Center for Integrity and Public Policy, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and Protect Internet Freedom, are calling on the agency to extend its deadline for comment on the rules, which would restrict how Internet service providers are allowed to use personal information collected from customers. Comments are presently due by May 27, with the deadline for a second round set for June 27.
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At stake is the standard to which ISPs will be held when it comes to retaining and sharing consumer data for third-party marketing purposes. The agency assumed authority to regulate privacy practices when it voted last year to reclassify broadband providers as public utilities. Democrats on the commission suggest the rules are needed to protect consumers, while Republicans question what value they would hold when so-called “edge providers” like Google and Facebook would remain exempt under the proposal.
“The ISP is the only market player that has the ability to see all of a consumer’s online traffic and behavior,” said Ernesto Falcon, a legislative counsel at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. “Consumers can’t hide from their ISP even if they tried.”
In November, a group called Consumer Watchdog petitioned the FCC to impose similar rules on other tech giants. Commissioners denied the petition, suggesting that regulatory authority over those belonged to the Federal Trade Commission. Yet the group’s executive director, John Simpson, said he is also at peace with the FCC’s current proposed rules. “Once those are in place, we will likely work to strengthen privacy protection regarding edge providers,” Simpson said, adding that it “may require legislation.”
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Whether Friday’s letter will affect the FCC’s timeline remains to be seen. The agency has had the added problem of optics: Problems with its electronic comment filing system resulted in the loss of several thousand comments submitted earlier in the month, prompting opponents of the rulemaking to suspect intentional censorship. And on May 12, a spokesman acknowledged that the agency had a backlog of more than 70,000 comments across issue areas.
“We respectfully request that the comment periods be extended for all proceedings being impacted by the FCC’s overwhelmed electronic comment filing system,” Friday’s letter said, calling on the commission to “redouble its efforts to ensure that comments are posted in timely and public manner.”
