When the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation held a July hearing on the Federal Communications Commission’s proposal to apply a new regime of privacy rules to broadband internet providers, on hand to testify were a slew of industry reps and academics. The FCC says the rules are aimed at giving consumers choices about how internet service providers use their data as well as confidence their data is safe. But some feel the rules are too top-down prescriptive. Former FTC Chair Jon Leibowitz said the FCC hasn’t identified any consumer harms that warrant the proposed rules, and claimed the proposed rules demonstrated a lack of privacy experience, but professor Paul Ohm of Georgetown University Law Center said the way ISPs can build detailed, persistent profiles of users make the rules measured and laudable. In Friday’s session, “The FCC’s rulemaking,” at 9:30 a.m. in room 211B of the Convention Center, Mark W. Brennan of Hogan Lovells; Laura Berger of the Federal Trade Commission; Jeff Brueggeman, CIPP/US, of AT&T; Susan Israel of Loeb & Loeb and the Future Privacy Forum’s John Verdi will discuss what to expect moving forward.
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