US telcos say "no more data sharing"... Except of course, the data they do share

indrora · May 16, 2019

Source: ZDNet

Several major American phone companies have written a joint letter to the FCC stating that they're no longer going to be opening new third-party sharing agreements and are terminating existing ones. From ZDnet:

Quote

AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon say they've stopped selling customer geo-location data to third-parties, according to letters the four companies have sent the US Federal Communications Committee; made public today.

The four have been called to answer for their business practices after investigations last year revealed that they were selling access to customer geo-location data to bounty hunters, prisons, and various other third-party companies, in many cases without user knowledge.

Now, following an official request from the FCC sent out at the start of the month, the US telcos say they've stopped, with a few exceptions.

AT&T claims they are only sharing customer location data with E911 services and service such as ride sharing applications but that this, according to the article are limited to "legal and highly controlled cases".

So, then -- what's my take on this? If this is really happening, then I think there might be a net good that comes of it from the perspective of control of personally identifiable information and the like -- especially given how cheap and easy it is to track someone if you know their phone number as it stands today, but on the other hand we're trusting the telcos to not be lying through their teeth to the FCC (and, by extension, the public) and not simultaneously also handing all this information to insert your favorite intelligence agency here. Because of course, they wouldn't do that, would they? I doubt there will be any accountability for any of this, and that's my big concern here.