The House will vote Tuesday on S.J. 34, a resolution that repeals the FCC’s broadband privacy rules.
The bill eliminates a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulation passed under the previous FCC Chairman, Tom Wheeler, that subjects internet service providers to duplicitous regulations on consumer privacy. Tom Wheeler, who passed the controversial Net Neutrality order to regulate the internet like a public monopoly, has been criticized by technology and consumer groups alike for agency overreach.
Consumer groups have long argued that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), not the FCC should regulate online privacy.
TechFreedom president Berin Szoka argued, “The FCC’s rules were unwise and unnecessary. The FCC will soon return broadband privacy policing to the Federal Trade Commission, where it belongs, like all online privacy. In the meantime, enacting this CRA will simply mean that the FCC will police broadband privacy case-by-case — just as it had done under Democratic leadership after the FCC’s 2015 Open Internet Order deprived the FTC of its consumer protection power over broadband by reclassifying broadband as a common carrier service.”
Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), chairman of the Subcommittee on Technology and Communications told Breitbart News that it is not within the FCC’s purview to regulate consumer privacy.
She explained, “I think that people should realize that the FTC is the primary regulator of privacy, not the FCC. They have the history and the expertise to regulate consumer privacy, and having more than one agency regulate the same agency creates abuse and government overreach. Businesses need regulatory clarity in order to properly operate.”
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