The Federal Trade Commission should stop “creepy” electronic billboards from surreptitiously harvesting cellphone data, New York’s senior senator said over the weekend.
“Your personal cellphone should not become a James Bond-like gadget that is used against you by some company,” Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer said in remarks delivered in Times Square. “It’s your phone, your privacy. You should have to give them permission to follow you when you drive by or walk by their billboard.”
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Schumer, the third-ranking Democrat in the Senate, said he was calling on FTC Chair Edith Ramirez to open an investigation and see whether the agency could stop the practice.
He added that companies could combine the billboard collection with other resources to create detailed profiles on individual consumers. “Once you pass by a Clear Channel spying billboard, your every move could be tracked, recorded and stored,” Schumer said. “That data can be combined with public data available online to create an incredibly detailed profile of you and your preferences.”
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Schumer is the second Senate Democrat to raise concerns about billboard surveillance since the beginning of the year. In a March letter responding to questions raised by Minnesota Sen. Al Franken, Clear Channel CEO Scott Wells denied that the company collects personally identifiable information, emphasizing that data is aggregated and anonymized.
However, Schumer said that assurance did little to mollify his concerns. “We all know that it’s a short step away from tracking this data and holding it to attaching your name to it … They have huge amounts of information on you, who knows what they could use it for?” Schumer questioned. “It’s something straight out of a scary movie. The scariest part is that the average consumer, the average cellphone user has no say in whether this happens.”
