WASHINGTON—The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), a leading science and tech policy think tank, today released the followed statement from Telecom Policy Analyst Doug Brake urging the FCC to hit the pause button on implementation of its controversial privacy rules:
The FCC privacy framework adopted just last October was a sharp departure from the FTC’s innovation-friendly, flexible guidelines that have overseen a successful burgeoning of the Internet. It’s time to hit pause before these bad rules are implemented, and then hopefully wipe the slate clean to start fresh on a new policy direction.
The order was poor policy and a result of poor process. Former Chairman Wheeler’s bait-and-switch of a rulemaking—itself a rejection of the U.S. multistakeholder model for developing Internet policies—resulted in privacy rules that did not at all mirror the FTC privacy framework in substance or structure. Instead, it created a rigid regulatory regime that would constrict the use of virtually all data that can be put to economically beneficial uses.
Chairman Pai should grant this stay. With so many issues at play, so many petitions for reconsideration, the potential for a Congressional Review Act resolution, and as controversial as the rules were, it makes an awful lot of sense for the FCC to put a hold on the privacy rules until the dust settles.
