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RandomFactor writes:

According to a letter to congress from Ajit V. Pai, chairman of the U.S. Federal Communication Commission (FCC), carriers broke federal law by selling customer location data. Pai intends to followup with "Notice(s) of Apparent Liability for Forfeiture."

The Federal Communications Commission's enforcement bureau has determined that "one or more" wireless carriers' practices for handling location data violated the law, Chairman Ajit Pai told Congress Friday.

The sales of location data by major telecommunication carriers was highlighted the past few years in a series of Motherboard stories which exposed the widespread practice.

All four major U.S. carriers have said they no longer sell location data.

Potential FCC fines aren't the only fallout from the revelations. The digital rights group Electronic Frontier Foundation is also suing AT&T for allegedly violating the Federal Communications Act.

That law requires telecoms to preserve confidentiality of "customer proprietary network information" -- including location data they obtain via their role as carriers.

The digital rights organization is seeking a court order prohibiting AT&T from sharing their location data.

AT&T argues that "the lawsuit should be dismissed, [since they] stopped providing geolocation data to aggregators"

It will be interesting to see if that line of legal reasoning works for them.

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