WASHINGTON, D.C. — Today, the Senate voted 50-48 to repeal the Federal Communications Commission’s broadband privacy rules, passed on a 3-2 vote in October of 2016 under the previous FCC Chairman, Tom Wheeler. The Congressional Review Act (CRA) allows Congress 60 legislative days to repeal regulations enacted by agencies with simple majority votes in the House and Senate and the President’s signature. Agencies are then prohibited from issuing rules substantially similar to those repealed under CRA.
“The FCC’s rules were unwise and unnecessary,” said TechFreedom President Berin Szóka. “The FCC will soon return broadband privacy policing to the Federal Trade Commission, where it belongs, like all online privacy. In the meantime, enacting this CRA will simply mean that the FCC will police broadband privacy case-by-case — just as it had done under Democratic leadership after the FCC’s 2015 Open Internet Order deprived the FTC of its consumer protection power over broadband by reclassifying broadband as a common carrier service.”
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