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In the Matter of Petition of Public Knowledge, Center for Digital Democracy, Consumer Watchdog, Consumer Federation of America, and TURN —The Utility Reform Network Introduction: 47 U.S.C. §551 and 47 U.S.C. § 338(i) (collectively referred to as “privacy rules”) require that cable and satellite providers (herein referred to as “cable operators”) obtain the “written or electronic consent of the subscriber concerned” prior to the collection and use of that information for advertising purposes. Cable operators are also required to provide a written statement to their subscribers, which clearly and conspicuously informs the subscriber of the nature of the use of their personally identifiable information. Through these rules, Congress and the Federal Communications Commission have emphasized the importance of giving consumer’s control over how their information is being used. Despite this, cable operators have continued to use large amounts of their customers’ data without properly obtaining customer consent or informing subscribers of the extent of the use of their information. The Commission should enforce the relevant privacy provisions to ensure that cable operators only use subscriber information when they have the consent required by law. Cable Operators Collect and Share Large Amounts of Customer Data to Generate Targeted Advertising. The use of consumer data to target consumers for advertising is on the rise. Exactly how and to what extent cable operators are leveraging their customer’s data has been extensively documented in a recent report by the Center for Digital Democracy. Cable operators increasingly gather their customers’ personal information, share and combine that information with third parties, and use it to target customers for advertising on an individual level. Verizon, Comcast, Google, AT&T, Time Warner, Cablevision and others have incorporated powerful layers of data collection and digital marketing technologies to better target individuals. AT&T’s TV Blueprint, for example, “gives advertisers working with AT&T the ability to reach people based on factors like device, operating system, whether or not they’re heavy data users or the status of their carrier contract,” using “sophisticated second-by-second set- top box data” and other information. AT&T pulls data “from millions of set-top boxes” and analyzes consumer viewing history and uses these data to target consumers based on their viewing profile. Companies like Cablevision leverage granular data and precise details of household viewing behavior, and combine it with third-party data covering other intimate details of consumers’ lives to analyze and target specific individuals with video advertising across a range of screens. In their own words, “this set-top box level targeting lets marketers target customers that fit particular trends, profiles, demographics and attributes, and they can also pair the Cablevision data with their own or third-party data.” Cablevision and AT&T are not alone in their pervasive use of consumer data. Comcast recently acquired Visible World, which boasts of using data “from millions of enabled Smart TVs” as part of its advertising targeting service. Data points used to target consumers include income, ethnicity, education level, what kind of car they drive, purchase history, and location of their residence. Further, Comcast has acquired companies like This Technology, which is capable of inserting personalized content into network streams—including advertising messages tailored for specific individuals. These programs illustrate how cable providers give advertisers the ability to easily access and use a customer’s information, without that customer knowing the extent to which that information is being used. While these practices are broadly indicative of the ways many cable operators improperly use subscriber data, AT&T, Cablevision, and Comcast are among the most egregious. The Commission should investigate these practices and find that they violate the privacy rules. --- Full filed complaint attached below.

The Center for Digital Democracy (CDD), a nonprofit organization representing the interests of consumers in the digital marketplace, strongly supports the Federal Communication Commission’s (FCC) proposal to empower individuals to make effective decisions regarding their privacy on broadband networks. Broadband Internet access service (BIAS) plays a powerful and distinctive role in the commercial digital media marketplace, requiring precisely the set of sensible safeguards offered by the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM). CDD believes it is entirely necessary and consistent with the Communications Act that the commission extend longstanding consumer-protection policies for the telephone network into the modern broadband context. The role of the network in the broadband marketplace has a distinct purpose compared to so-called “edge” content providers: to facilitate a fairly managed and efficient connection between the subscriber/consumer and the content and/or services of their choice. Given their network-management role, BIAS providers have unique capabilities in terms of monitoring the communications and activities of their subscribers, enabling the capture and use of an extensive array of personal and other consumer information. Positioned by necessity at the center of subscribers’ wireline or wireless broadband use, and holding a “digital key” that can help analyze much of their users’ digitally connected behaviors, BIAS providers have unlimited opportunities to influence the decisions consumers make via data-collection-related applications and services. Consumers today confront a far-reaching and largely invisible data-gathering apparatus that tracks and analyzes their every move online. For example, as the FTC has acknowledged, the growth of cross-device tracking, enabling the identification of a particular consumer’s use of personal computers, mobile phones, tablets, and increasingly even television, and combining multiple sources of data for the development of a targeting profile, illustrates how recent advances in digital data collection pose growing threats to consumer privacy. Indeed, the journal of the Association of National Advertisers explained just last month, “cross-device marketing … allows unprecedented access to individual consumers via personal or shared household devices. … Data-driven cross-device marketers gain exclusive access to a slew of advantageous marketing enhancements, including consistent messaging across all devices … .” Leading BIAS providers promise such cross-device targeting capabilities. Lacking the ability to enact regulations to protect privacy (except for children 12 and under), the FTC has been powerless to ensure consumer protection from cross-device tracking practices, let alone from the growing myriad of practices that gather consumer data from social media, mobile app, online video usage, programmatic targeting, and many other practices. Without the authority to issue regulations on privacy-related matters connected to consumer financial services, for example, the FTC has been forced to rely on its Section 5 authority related to unfair and deceptive practices. In practical terms, this has enabled the digital-data industry to recognize that there are no real constraints to their rapidly expanding collection, analysis, and use of consumer data. The FTC has long recognized that its inability to issue regulations has placed the agency at a serious disadvantage, and has called for the enactment of new regulatory authority. For example, as former FTC Chairman Jon Leibowitz testified before Congress in 2009, in order for the agency “to perform a greater and more effective role protecting consumers … changes in the law and additional authority to promulgate needed rules …” are required. As CDD explained in its March 2016 report on the growth of digital data gathering by leading ISPs (and filed separately in this proceeding), companies such as ATT, Comcast, Verizon, Cablevision, and Charter have made significant investments in their ability to capture, process, and take advantage of a consumer’s information across all the devices they use daily. They are using cloud- and IP-based management systems to deliver data-connected advertising and marketing; have invested in or allied with real-time programmatic marketing technologies that, in milliseconds, make personalized ad-related decisions on which consumers to target and for what product; and have acquired numerous companies that strengthen their hold and use of consumer information, including data gathered by their consumers’ use of apps, online video, and mobile phones... Key characteristics of the BIAS data collection apparatus include: [see attached comments for full submission]

Katharina Kopp, Ph.D., will join the Center for Digital Democracy (CDD) on 6 June 2016 as its deputy director and director of policy. Dr. Kopp comes to CDD with decades of experience as an advocate, scholar, policy analyst, privacy expert, and corporate leader. She will develop and oversee a range of new initiatives at CDD, expanding the scope of its work on the role and impact of “Big Data” in contemporary society. Dr. Kopp will focus particularly on developing new policies to advance individual autonomy and consumer protections, as well as social justice, equity, and human rights. She will also play a leadership role in the organization’s ongoing constituency-building and grassroots efforts. Dr. Kopp worked with the Center for Media Education during the 1990’s and served as a key policy advocate during the passage and implementation of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA). In addition to her work with the Aspen Institute, the Benton Foundation, and the Health Privacy Project, Dr. Kopp served as vice president at American Express, leading its global privacy risk management program. Most recently she was the director of the Privacy and Data Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology. “We are privileged to have Katharina Kopp join CDD,” said Jeff Chester, its executive director. “Her unique leadership qualities and rich background will shape the organization’s agenda in this important new phase of our work. This includes forging partnerships with global NGOs, research institutions, and community-based organizations.” Dr. Kopp, deputy director, added: “I look forward to exploring the effects of technology and discriminatory data practices on democracy and social justice, particularly the effects on individual autonomy and increasing inequality. How to respond to these trends with appropriate public policy will be core to my work. Furthermore, I want to see CDD engaged in shaping the public’s understanding of these processes and to frame the solutions not in individualistic but collective and systemic terms. I believe that this will be key to the success of any policy proposals.” The Center for Digital Democracy is a leading nonprofit organization focused on empowering and protecting the rights of the public in the digital era. Since its founding in 2001 (and prior to that through its predecessor organization, the Center for Media Education), CDD has been at the forefront of research, public education, and advocacy protecting consumers in the digital age.

Phone and cable ISPs pose a major threat to the privacy of their subscribers and consumers. They have a growing arsenal of “Big Data” capabilities that eavesdrop on their customers—including families. Internet Service Providers are gathering data on what we do and where we go, using sophisticated algorithms and predictive analytics to sell our information to marketers. As CDD documented in a report released last week, ISPs have been on a data buying and partnering shopping spree so they can build in-depth digital profiles of their customers (such as Verizon (link is external)/AOL/Millennial Media and Comcast/ (link is external)Visible World). Consumers should have the right to make decisions on how their information can be collected, shared or sold. With a set of FCC safeguards, Americans will have some of their privacy restored. We look forward placing on the record all the ways those ISPs now—and will—threaten the privacy of Americans. Several commissioners appear uninformed about the ability of the FTC to protect consumer privacy. The FTC does not have the regulatory authority to ensure privacy of Americans is protected (except in rare cases, such as the Children’s privacy law we helped develop). The FTC’s framework has failed to do anything to check the massive collection of our data that everyone online confronts. It’s the role of the FCC to ensure that broadband networks operate in the public interest, including protecting consumers. Today’s vote reaffirms that the FCC takes its mission to do so seriously.

Americans face new privacy threats from the use of their facial and other biometric information, as personal details of our physical selves are captured, analyzed and used for commercial purposes. Facial recognition (link is external)technologies are part of the ever-growing (link is external)data collection and profiling (link is external) being conduced daily on Americans today—whether we are online and offline. Companies want to be able to use the power (link is external) of facial recognition to make (link is external) decisions about us—including how we are to be treated in stores and on websites. Consumer groups have called on industry to support pro-consumer and pro-rights policies that would ensure an individual can decide whether facial and other personal physical information can be collected in the first place. Last June, however, the industry dominated process led by the Department of Commerce refused to support respecting a persons’ right to control how their biometric data can be gathered and used. As a result, consumer and privacy groups withdrew (link is external) from the Commerce Department “stakeholder” convening on facial recognition. These meetings—primarily dominated by industry lobbyists—are part of a White House initiated effort to design “codes of conduct” to ensure American’s have greater privacy rights. But instead of trying to address the concerns of the consumer and privacy community about meaningful safeguards for facial recognition when used for commercial purposes, the Commerce Department merely continued the process without their participation. For the Commerce Department, its priority is to help grow the consumer data profiling industry—regardless of whether Americans face a serious threat to their privacy and the consequences of potential discriminatory and unfair practices. Today, the Commerce Department is considering industry proposals (link is external) on facial recognition that fail to ensure the American public is protected by the growing use of facial data collection for commercial use. The drafts allow unlimited use of our most personal data without effective safeguards. Instead of ensuring basic rights—such as giving people the right to make informed decisions prior to the collection of their facial data—the industry proposes a scheme that would allow it to harvest our faces, skin color, age, race/ethnicity and more without any limit. By allowing such a clearly inadequate and self-serving industry proposal to be considered at all, the Department of Commerce (and its NTIA division) demonstrates it cannot be trusted to protect consumers. It is putting the commercial interests of the data industry ahead of its responsibilities to the American public. The process and the proposals are not reflective of America today. We cannot believe that President Obama (link is external) endorses how his Commerce Department has transformed the idea of a “Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights” into one that really gives carte blanche to the unfettered use of our faces and other highly personal biometric information.