
FCC Proposes to Fine Wireless Carriers $200M for Selling Customer Location Data - feross
https://krebsonsecurity.com/2020/02/fcc-proposes-to-fine-wireless-carriers-200m-for-selling-customer-location-data/
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hedora
This should be set as a function of how much they made, and damages incurred.
10x amount they charged + $200/victim/incident (so, $200 for each record sent)
seems reasonable to me.

The latter part of the fine should go to the victims, I think.

If this bankrupts them, the executives, then board, then shareholders should
be the ones to take a bath. (Not pensions, etc). After that, the fine should
be reduced until it leads to a net zero valuation of the company, with the
difference being given to the victims by issuing stock at the resulting stock
price.

I’d like the fines to be applicable to anyone selling location data (app
developers, linking shady libraries, I’m looking at you), and enforceable via
class action rights that can’t be waived, as well as small claims court.

The rules should also apply to data returned by any non-mandatory compliance
with government requests.

For class actions, consumers should get at least $190 of the $200, regardless
of any pre-trial settlements.

I think these are minimally adequate steps to end this behavior.

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visarga
> 10x amount they charged + $200/victim/incident (so, $200 for each record
> sent) seems reasonable to me.

Why be so nice, when companies ask for $150,000 per copyright infringement?
Leaking personal data is much more serious.

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grawprog
>The FCC proposed fining T-Mobile $91 million; AT&T faces more than $57
million in fines; Verizon is looking at more than $48 million in penalties;
and the FCC said Sprint should pay more than $12 million

So that's actually $200 million split between four companies and what really
amounts to not much more than cost od business for them.

~~~
mikeyouse
Lol - T-Mobile has $40B in annual revenue, does anyone think a fine of $0.09
billion covering years of wrongdoing is going to change their behavior? I'm
sure 0.2% of their annual revenue will really sting.

~~~
veeralpatel979
Something I read in another HN thread was that while $200M may not be much
compared to T-Mobile's annual revenue, it's probably a lot compared to how
much ISPs earn from selling user data.

This doesn't factor in the ongoing PR cost of headlines like "FCC weighing
fining ISP X", "FCC fines ISP X", "ISP X appeals fine", "ISP X loses appeal",
etc.

Still, I agree the fine could have been harsher.

~~~
JustSomeNobody
What PR cost? We don’t have _any_ options, we have to use one of these sleazy
companies.

~~~
veeralpatel979
Fair point. Typically I'm on the side of the free market and less government
regulation, but this system breaks down if consumers have no choice but to use
a small set of companies, who all have an interest in doing the same thing,
and creating a new competitor is difficult.

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dustinmr
Also known as not a free market.

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rectang
That's the No True Scotsman Fallacy. The only absolutely "free" market is a
state of nature, without laws and where might is right. Once you impose laws,
it's not completely free.

The US telecom market could be more "free" than it is, but there are lots of
options, none of which are perfectly "free".

~~~
defnotashton2
It's not a free market or anywhere near and implying such is dishonest. Coops
would be everywhere if it wouldn't be for rediculous city, county, state and
federal regulations. Not to mention the miles and miles of dark fiber all over
the country held up in ownership litigation, not to mention the federal
government created this problem in the first place by heavily subsidizing bell
and continuing to do so.

The telco industry has always been a regulated monopolistic market and that is
primarily caused and was created by regulation..

~~~
maccam94
One nitpick: AFAIK the issues at the city/county level come from service
contracts that guarantee exclusivity in return for things like providing
service to sparsely populated (unprofitable) areas and discounted rates for
the poor/disabled/etc. You can argue that those deals shouldn't have been
made, but then the local government would have been allocating public
resources (running wires under streets, conduits, etc) in a way that excluded
their disadvantaged constituents.

Anywho I am a proponent of Local Loop Unbundling. Limited conduit/pole space
and complex webs of property easements make wired telecoms natural monopolies.
Have the government own the conduits and fiber cables, and rent them to
service providers instead.

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LatteLazy
There you have it: the price of privacy is less than 1usd per citizen.

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erikig
I wish there was an app that allowed me to charge all these data companies for
use of my data directly.

The app would pop up when I was signing up for any service and let me know
which of my data the service be using and give me a price per month.

I would then gladly share it and collect my pennies per day or opt-out and get
degraded service or no service at all.

~~~
fooker
This is how this might look like:

Gmail - 200$ per year. Gmail-freemium - 0$ per year.

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RileyJames
Isn’t that basically what it’s like already?

You can have free gmail, consumer edition. With ads, no privacy, etc.

Or G Suite. Which includes gmail, docs, calendar, etc, for $6~ (I’m seeing
$7.80 CAD) Per month.

Making it about half the $200 you quoted, but none the less, possible.

~~~
na85
Seems to me that 200 dollars is what Google owes me for the privilege of
selling my data to advertisers.

~~~
ElFitz
I don't work at Google, I might be wrong, and I strongly dislike the company.
But from what I've gathered they're on my "lesser evil" side of the data-
gathering game, in that they don't appear to _actually sell it_.

My understanding is that what they actually sell is _their ability to serve
and target_ advertisers' ads, using the massive amounts of data they gather by
violating their users' privacy.

Unlike these ISPs, who just sell the data itself, or Facebook who just gave it
away for free for years.

~~~
SquareWheel
You're correct. They have never sold information as the parent commenter is
claiming.

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maerF0x0
How much is the government going to charge itself for the mass surveillance
and data collection?

~~~
gscott
Exact, this fine probably represents a fraction of the fee the carriers charge
the NSA for a data feed of this information.

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dntbnmpls
It's meaningless unless we know how much wireless carriers stand to make by
selling customer location data.

If they make $20 billion and the fine is $200 million, then it's a small
business expense and a tax write off.

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throwaway713
Can someone explain how FCC fines work? I’ve always been confused by them. Are
the companies breaking a law, or just some kind of regulation they agreed to?
And if so, why does it take the FCC so long to do anything? It’s been well
known for the years that mobile carriers have been selling location. It almost
seems like the FCC lets it go on as long as they can in order to levy as big a
fine as possible. Or am I just being cynical?

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hermitdev
It'd be nice if these fines were distributed amongst the affected customers,
but of course it won't.

Edit: grammar

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SN76477
It should be higher.

It should be shaking in their boots high.

Like a single mom getting a speeding ticket high.

AT&T generated $47.99B in 2018

They do not care too much if they are fined 200M.

How about we make it 2B? Now they are nervous, now they see where the line is
drawn in the sand.

~~~
jaclaz
> now they see where the line is drawn in the sand.

line which should actually be carved in stone

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mygo
I’m in favor of companies being fined for their screw ups, but why does only
the government get the money? When do we, the victims, get our compensation?

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caconym_
Not enough? What are you gonna do about it, little people?

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tapejek
I think it's going to be the right thing to do. There should be protection of
personal data

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tuesday20
Can’t they fine the buyers?

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joeblau
That’s it?

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sitkack
JAIL!

