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Full of confidence in Ajit Pai – the new boss at the FCC, America's communications watchdog – groups representing US telcos are seeking a repeal of the regulator's privacy rules.
Citing the appointment of Pai and the imminent decision to roll back the previous administration's net neutrality protections, industry groups now hope that the little requirement for an opt-in for the collection of user data will be frozen, if not done away with completely.
[...] "For over twenty years, ISPs have protected their consumers' data with the strongest pro-consumer policies in the internet ecosystem," the group writes.
"ISPs know the success of any digital business depends on earning their customers' trust on privacy."
Source: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/01/31/net_neutrality_dead_privacy_next/
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 02 2017, @04:44PM
If you think net neutrality is about security or privacy, I think you should double check the meaning. Net neutrality gives anyone serving up content a fair equal footing in bandwidth relative to everybody else rather than giving those with deep pockets a monopoly on the type of content or service provided. Privacy and security are separate matters entirely.
On that note, I agree that ISPs should work to maintain the privacy and security of their customers, and further that that's no reason that there shouldn't be formal regulations to ensure that they're _required_ to do so. If requirements get repealed, what stops any provider from just saying "Great, we don't have spend any effort at all on privacy or security anymore"?
Anyone that's ever held a job anywhere knows full well that a company won't dedicate any effort to something that they have no regulatory or financial motivation for. Even if it were in the best financial interests for a company to maintain privacy and security standards without regulatory requirement, that would only last until the second it became more profitable to sell information or access off.