FCC Considers New Technology Mandates, Threatening Innovation and Privacy

CDT — FCC Considers New Technology Mandates, Threatening Innovation and Privacy:

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is actively con­sid­er­ing whether to adopt tech­nol­ogy man­dates that have the poten­tial to sig­nif­i­cantly harm inno­va­tion and pri­vacy on the Internet. Two ongo­ing pro­ceed­ings — one involv­ing a small part of the ongo­ing Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) saga and one con­cern­ing E91 — illus­trate the danger.

The Internet was not the pri­mary tar­get of either pro­ceed­ing, but Internet and IP-​​based ser­vices would likely be squarely impacted by adverse FCC rules. In the CALEA pro­ceed­ing, the FBI tar­geted a spe­cific stan­dard for wire­taps in the wire­less tele­phone con­text, but the FBI made clear that it thought that what­ever rules applied to wire­less should apply also to wire­taps of broad­band Internet access.