ISPs really, really want to be able to share your data
From: Fortune
by Stacey Higginbotham | @gigastacey
As your personal data becomes more valuable your ISPs want permission to share more of it.
Hold on to your data, because Internet service providers are ready to give up your phone calls, your web surfing habits and troves of other personal information it has under the idea that regulating privacy based on industry specific rules is archaic, an AT&T executive said Tuesday. Robert Quinn, a senior vice president for AT&T who handles federal regulatory matters, said “entity-based regulation,” such as the Health Insurance Portability Accountability and Assurance Act, which protects medical data, “is a last-century based approach to regulation.”
Quinn, speaking at workshop hosted by the Federal Communications Commission, didn’t detail the rules he’s looking hoping to see the agency implement. But he did point to AT&T’s current privacy policy for its new GigaPower gigabit broadband Internet service, as an example of the types of privacy that Ma Bell favors. Customers of the GigaPower service, which AT&T sells in Austin, Texas, and is rolling out a few other markets, can choose between paying $70 per month for gigabit broadband service in exchange for letting AT&T see what websites they visit or pay $99 per month for the same service without the snooping (plus a $7 monthly modem rental fee and $99 activation fee that AT&T doesn’t like to mention in its marketing).Ma Bell uses the data of customers who opt into the program to show them more targeted online ads.
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