The FCC says it can’t force Google and Facebook to stop tracking their users
The FCC says it can’t force Google and Facebook to stop
tracking their users
By Brian Fung and Andrea Peterson November 6 at 12:06
PM
The Federal Communications Commission said Friday that it
will not seek to impose a requirement on Google, Facebook and other Internet
companies that would make it harder for them to track consumers’ online
activities.
The announcement is a blow to privacy advocates who had
petitioned the agency for stronger Internet privacy rules. But it's a win for
many Silicon Valley companies whose business models rely on monetizing Internet
users’ personal data.
It's also the latest move in an ongoing battle to defend
the agency’s new net neutrality rules, which opponents warned would result in
the regulation of popular Web sites and online services. By rejecting the
petition, the FCC likely hopes to defuse that argument. The rules, which took
effect this summer, allow the FCC to regulate only providers of Internet
access, not individual Web sites, said a senior agency official.
Consumer Watchdog, an activist group, petitioned the FCC
in June to support a technology that would allow consumers to signal to Web
sites that they did not want to be tracked. By clicking a button in their
browser settings, users would have been able to send a “do not track” message
to Web site operators when they surfed the Internet.
Some Web sites have committed to honoring those requests
voluntarily, but many do not. If it had succeeded, the petition could have made
Do Not Track a U.S. standard.
In a sign of its growing ambitions, however, the FCC has
dramatically expanded its role in combating privacy violations among
communications providers. Agency officials slapped Cox Communications, the
country’s fourth-largest cable Internet company, with a $595,000 fine Thursday
to settle charges related to a breach of consumer data. It has also gone after
AT&T and a number of smaller telecom companies for similar security
breaches.
Although the agency appears to be stopping short of
establishing privacy rules for Web site operators, it is studying how net
neutrality could allow it to set new privacy expectations for Internet
providers.
Outside attempts by industry and privacy advocates to
define and enforce a Do Not Track standard have been plagued by delays, as well
as debates over what such a signal would require.
Privacy groups argue that Do Not Track should mean that
no information is collected about a user. Online advertising groups say Do Not
Track should prevent a company from serving up targeted advertisements but not
impede data collection. This debate, however, has been superseded by even newer
tracking technologies that Do Not Track is not designed to address.
The current Do Not Track proposal before the World Wide
Web Consortium, an international Web standards body, has faced criticism from
privacy advocates and leaders on Capitol Hill who say it does not do enough to
protect consumers from companies that track users. In a letter to the group
sent last month, Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Al Franken (D-Minn.) and Rep.
Joe Barton (R-Tex.) expressed concerns about the plan.
“Under the standard, first parties are free to continue
tracking online activity even if a user activates the 'Do Not Track' signal and
can share that information among its many affiliates,” the lawmakers wrote.
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