The Commission released a statement from Mark Wigfield, Acting Director of the Office of Media Relations, stating that Chairman Pai has advocated “returning to a technology-neutral privacy framework for the online world and harmonizing the FCC’s privacy rules for broadband providers with the FTC’s standards for others in the digital economy.” The statement notes that the previous privacy rules scheduled to take effect on March 2, 2017 are not consistent with the FTC’s privacy standards, and therefore the Chairman is seeking to act on a request to stay this rule before that date.
The rules referred to above as being scheduled to take effect on March 2 are the data security rules (Section 64.2005) of the Privacy framework. However, as stated in the press release, it is now unlikely that such data security rules will take effect on March 2. As noted in the press release, “if Commissioners are willing to cast their votes by March 2, then the full Commission will decide the stay request. If not, then the Wireless Competition Bureau will stay that one element of the privacy rules pending a full Commission vote on the pending petitions for reconsideration consistent with past practice.”
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