Broadband Privacy Rules: Advertisers Ask Congress To Kill Privacy Protections

The advertising industry is asking Congress to roll back broadband privacy rules implemented by the Federal Communications Commission that would restrict the ability of internet service providers to collect data from consumers without permission.

Six trade groups representing the advertising industry issued a statement on Monday that lauded the efforts of Republican Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona and Republican Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee for introducing legislation that would eliminate the consumer protections.

Sessions previously suggested killing the protections by using the Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress to undo rules set by federal agencies with a majority vote. It would also irrevocably kill the rule by barring the agency that issued the rule from ever issuing it again.

“Our digital economy is the global leader, providing billions of dollars in ad-supported content and services to consumers, and the innovation and investment that have driven its success have rested on robust, consistent self-regulatory privacy standards backstopped by the Federal Trade Commission,” the groups said in a statement.

The signatories of the statement included the American Association of Advertising Agencies, the American Advertising Federation, the Association of National Advertisers, the Data and Marketing Association, the Interactive Advertising Bureau and the Network Advertising Initiative.

The rules opposed by the advertisers were first passed by the FCC in October 2016 while the commission was still under the leadership of Tom Wheeler, an appointee of Barack Obama and the architect of the landmark Open Internet rules designed to protect net neutrality.

Under the Broadband Consumer Privacy Rules, which were set to start to go into effect earlier this month, internet service providers would have been required to ask for permission before collecting sensitive information from their users.

The protections defined sensitive information as any information related to a user’s finances, health, information from children, precise geolocation data, web browsing history and app usage history. It also included content from unencrypted messages that may be accessible to the service provider.

Any information that fell under that umbrella definition would require customers to opt-in before ISPs could collect the data. Information considered to be non-sensitive could still be collected by default, but would require an option to opt-out.

The advertising groups claimed the rules would "break with well-accepted and function industry practices," which it claimed would result in "chilling innovation and hurting the consumers the regulation was supposed to protect."

The FCC—under the leadership of Donald Trump appointee Ajit Pai—voted to halt the implementation of the Broadband Consumer Privacy Rules earlier this month, stopping the protections before they went into effect.