FCC Considering Offering Choice of Privacy Policies to Allow for More Detailed Data Collection
The FCC is considering collecting more detailed data for mobile users who are “more comfortable” sharing detailed statistics that “identify their phone” at specific coordinates at a particular time, said FCC attorney James Miller. He’s heading the mobile broadband measurement group’s effort to develop a privacy disclosure statement (CD Nov 29 p3). The group met Wednesday to get a sneak-peek at what the smartphone app will look like, and to discuss potential privacy issues. Officials emphasized that all data collected would be cleansed of detailed GPS information before it’s released publicly.
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"Consumers have in some cases very different levels of comfort with privacy information, and the utility calculus” of trade offs between communicating and oversharing, Miller said. Some people post “much, much more specific information” on the Internet than what’s collected by the FCC wireless ISP broadband speed testing program, he said, such as where they go for dinner and who they're with. Different privacy “tracks” could be offered “as an opportunity,” and would inform users that any information they upload “would be open to correlation by third parties,” Miller said.
One use case, for instance, would be collection of specific tower identifications. “If we knew where the towers were, that would help us to understand how broadband service in the area was mapped,” Miller told us. Collected data could give the commission a way to understand where the tower is, he said. Different levels of privacy policy could differentiate how detailed the collected time stamp information is, limiting it for users who are not comfortable sharing that data, he said. For people who “understand the value” of having data on how broadband performance changes with time, they could agree to a more permissive privacy policy, and more detailed data could be collected that would be “extremely valuable,” Miller said.
Collected mobile data will be released publicly subject to a privacy analysis, said Walter Johnston, chief of the Electromagnetic Compatibility Division in the FCC Office of Engineering and Technology. He expects the commission to have to redact the data to “ensure anonymity.” Any GPS data released wouldn’t be traceable to specific handsets, and would only be released in the aggregate, Johnston said. “We want to use it in a very restricted, disciplined way because it is a very precise way to tie data into an identity."
The group also got an advance look at what its smartphone app will look like. The application, being readied for launch in early 2013, will collect data on Android and iPhone smartphones and tablets, but due to restrictions in the iPhone’s operating system, there will be “a number of differences” between the two platforms, said Alex Salter CEO of SamKnows, the company that the FCC contracted with for wireline and wireless ISP speed testing, which is developing the app. The Android app will have automated, scheduled testing. IPhone users will have to manually run the test by launching the application. This will “certainly mean a reduction in sample size,” Salter said.
The Android and iPhone platforms will permit data collection on downstream and upstream throughput, latency, packet loss, Web browsing and jitter, Salter said. The Android app will also be able to gather “passive” data on cell tower ID, neighboring cell towers, SIM operator, and roaming state, he said. FCC officials haven’t decided whether to capture latitude and longitude data, which could raise thorny privacy concerns if collected along with time data, said Miller. FCC officials are also working to develop policies about how to collect and distribute data that might be sought by a third party, such as law enforcement, he said.
During the presentation, an FTC official took issue with a screen mock-up showing a pre-checked box indicating the user approved the privacy disclosure statement. “We typically for consumer protection purposes have a box that is empty, and require them to take an action,” the official said. “OK, that’s been noted,” responded Salter, who said he would pass the comments on to the software engineers. Sample screens showed results charts with a data table. “The key thing” is that we are “making every effort” to present to the user “all of the metrics we are collecting,” Salter said.
The FCC is verifying data for the next wireline speed report, and officials expect a “quiet period” while they write the report, which is still on track for completion in January, Johnston said. “Historically, we've spent two to three weeks just making sure we have confidence in the numbers.” Measurement Lab engineer Thomas Gideon of the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute discussed M Lab’s new outage measurement method, borrowed from the Internet Systems Consortium model. FCC officials said they may start holding wireline measurement meetings once every six weeks until new projects are taken up.