Use Automotive Safety Spectrum Only for Safety, Public Interest Groups Urge FCC

The FCC is examining sharing the band between Wi-Fi and automotive safety systems, with a number of prototype devices at the agency for tests (see 1608010044). Commissioner Mike O'Rielly insisted DSRC must be used only to protect the “safety of life” and not for advertising, paying for parking or mapping and navigation (see 1606080057).

“Americans do not need to have ‘Facebook on Wheels’ imposed on them by government fiat in the name of public safety,” the public interest groups said. “Absent Commission action on the Petition, DSRC licensees will have the freedom to install any commercial application they choose on the consumer’s government mandated DSRC device." Unless the FCC acts, “DSRC licensees are free to partner with any commercial data broker, advertiser or any other third party with virtually no notice to consumers and no need to obtain consumer permission -- or even provide consumers with a means of opting out of these commercial arrangements,” the filing said.

The FCC also needs to look closely at cyberthreats, the groups said. “DSRC units provide an access route for malware to spread directly from car to car, enabling hackers to steal the personal information of drivers.” Those concerns are amplified by a pending government mandate requiring all new model vehicles to come equipped with DSRC, the filing said. While the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration “has proposed many potential protections, none of these are law, and no one can say with certainty what the final rules will be, or when they would go into effect,” said John Gasparini, policy fellow at PK.

An official with one of the groups said interest is growing in the 5.9 GHz band, with groups that weren't involved in the past signing on to the filing. Groups signing the petition include PK and OTI, the Center for Rural Strategies, Consumer Action, Consumer Federation of America, Consumer Watchdog, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Electronic Privacy Information Center, The Greenlining Institute, Policy Center for Digital Democracy, Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council, National Hispanic Media Coalition, Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, U.S. Public Interest Research Group, World Privacy Forum and X-Lab.

Comments were still trickling into RM-11771 Wednesday. The Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers hadn't filed, but will oppose a stay, said Wade Newton, director-communications.

Vehicle-to-vehicle DSRC systems “don’t collect, transmit or store information that’s linkable to a particular person or vehicle,” Newton told us. “So they don’t raise consumer privacy issues or implicate the commission’s customer proprietary network information or proposed customer proprietary information rules. We’ll argue that the commission should also deny the emergency stay request because it’s fatally flawed. It wasn’t filed as a separate pleading as required by the commission’s rules and also doesn’t identify a ‘decision or order’ to stay,” he said. “We also believe the petitioners don’t meet their burden under the four-factor test applied by the commission when determining whether to stay the effectiveness of one of its orders.” The alliance also will question arguments irreparable harm would occur if the FCC rejects the petition, Newton said.

The IEEE 1609 DSRC Working Group told the FCC the public interest groups are wrong. “Security and privacy have been fundamental DSRC technical and policy requirements since its inception,” the IEEE group said. “IEEE [Standard] 1609.2-2016 is comprehensive and informed by industry best practices and by academic research in cryptography, privacy and anonymization.” The standard has been revised repeatedly since 2006 “with a thorough review at each revision by the Working Group, by the IEEE Standards Association balloting process, and by industry and academic experts,” the filing said.