Less than three months ago, Congress and President Trump repealed our broadband privacy rights. This decision was wildly unpopular —according to a YouGov poll, 80 percent of Democratic voters and 75 percent of Republican voters believed President Trump should have vetoed the repeal bill. In today’s divided times, it’s rare to see such unanimity amongst voters on an issue. It makes perfect sense, though, given that almost no one wants their cable or telephone company to be able to resell data they extract from our browsing history, the applications we use, and our location when we use the Internet, without our permission.
Fortunately, Senator Ben Hueso can help restore our broadband privacy rights. Last week AB 375 (D-Chau) was introduced to put the repealed federal broadband privacy rules into state law so that your personal information is more under your control. Senator Hueso’s Committee of Energy, Utilities, and Communications is likely to be a lead committee on moving the legislation forward and in his role as Chair he can be instrumental in making progress on this front.
As a Californian, that means when you or your family use the Internet at home, the cable and telephone company that you already pay money to every month will not be able to sell your personal data without your consent. It also means that when you use your smartphone on the road, the industry is not allowed to sell to third parties the locations you travel to and from unless you give them the sign off. Such a legal right conveys real power back to us to maintain control over our personal lives and our privacy, which is why the telephone and cable lobby fought so hard to eliminate it.
For years, companies like Comcast, AT&T, and grew more concentrated and vertically integrated with movie studios, broadcasters, news services, and other media channels. While smaller Internet Service Providers (ISPs) remain firmly committed to our privacy rights and largely opposed the Congressional repeal, the largest companies want to maximize their ability to collect and commercialize data about your online activities. This is especially concerning because your ISP can connect all of the dots of where you go online. This vastly surpasses the powers of Google and Facebook who only know what you do on their platforms or sites where they serve ads aside from the technologies available to block them.
Undoubtedly the telephone and cable lobby will apply as much pressure as possible on Senator Hueso to kill the bill. They will argue that it is unnecessary because they will promise to respect our privacy rights—despite having spent millions in Washington D.C. to eviscerate them. They will argue that it is not fair to them to be restricted in such a way—despite more than 20 years of settled federal law imposing the same restriction on the dominant communications networks (first telephone, today broadband). Some will even make the laughable argument that legislation will prevent innovative services that customers want—even though AB 375 lets them resell the data they claim to need, as long as they first obtain meaningful consent before trying to profit from it.
Be sure to call Senator Hueso’s office today to tell him that people want their privacy rights restored. People already pay too much for their broadband service and do not think cable and telephone companies are entitled to make even more profit on private information that is not rightfully theirs to exploit. Once Senator Hueso’s committee approves the bill, be sure to tell your fellow Californians to talk to their elected officials in Sacramento. The likes of Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon will not surrender anytime soon, but so long as elected officials put the interests of their voters first, we can succeed at restoring broadband
Falcon is the Legislative Counsel at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and has worked in technology issues in Washington DC and California for more than ten years.
