FCC Ruling May Leave Cell Phone Users Exposed

WASHINGTON -- Federal regulators say new rules to bar advertisers from spying on the locations of wireless customers are not necessary, arguing that existing laws already do the job. The Federal Communications Commission declined Wednesday to create rules to direct when and how advertisers could track the location of mobile phone users.

The request for regulation came from what would seem to be an unlikely source--the telecommunications industry itself. The Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association, or CTIA, a trade group representing about 350 companies, filed the request in 2000.

The decision frustrated both privacy advocates and the wireless industry.

"The FCC missed an opportunity here," says Cheryl Leanza, deputy director of the Media Access Project, a nonprofit, public interest law firm. "Without rules, the danger is [that] a customer could authorize disclosure of the information without realizing it."

Concerned About Consent

The FCC argues that existing laws already require wireless subscribers to provide explicit consent before their location can be made available.

The problem, Leanza says, is that current laws lack specifics, such as what actually constitutes consent. That could be broadly interpreted by some carriers and advertisers, she says, adding that a mobile carrier could, for example, bury the necessary consent statement in long agreements signed by its subscribers.

Granted such uncertainty, consumers may easily get duped into sharing their data with advertisers, Leanza says.

Without rules, law enforcement could potentially use the technology to subpoena people's locations, says the Electronic Privacy Information Center in comments to the FCC filed jointly with Leanza's group.

FCC commissioner Michael Copps, dissenting from his fellow regulators, wrote that the agency's inaction is "a course that is anti-privacy, anti-consumer, and will slow the growth of the wireless industry."

"Customers will shy away from services if they think that the privacy of something as sensitive as their location is up for grabs," Copps said in his statement.

Phones of the Future

Phones that keep track of their own locations may be hard to find now, but they won't be for long. Under FCC regulations, wireless carriers have until 2006 to provide 95 percent of their subscribers with the new technology. Although the government is pushing for the advance to aid emergency calls, location-based advertising data has long been imagined by science-fiction writers and, more importantly, advertisers.

In anticipation of these developments, the CTIA has outlined a set of privacy principles for the use of such location information, which requires companies to provide subscribers with a "meaningful opportunity" to consent to sharing their location data, inform them about the use of the material, and ensure the security of the information.

"We wanted to ensure that consumers, when they used this new service, would understand their rights, their responsibilities, and how they would be protected," says Travis Larson, a CTIA spokesperson.