T-Mobile USA told the FCC this week it supported a suggestion by ...

T-Mobile filed reply comments on a petition by public safety groups, including the Assn. of Public Safety Communications Officials, that argued for broader disclosure of customer situation in emergency situations. T-Mobile said it sympathized with the frustration public safety operators have in this area, but agreed with CTIA the FCC lacks authority to change such disclosure requirements because they're based on statutory mandates. These concerns “are better directed to Congress,” T-Mobile said. But T-Mobile said it backed DoJ providing an opinion on the legal obligations of carriers. T-Mobile said it also would support the FCC hosting a “legal summit” or information exchange to clarify the scope of the law and a carrier’s obligation to protect customer privacy. T-Mobile outlined its written emergency disclosure procedures. Its policy is to “positively identify” an emergency caller and obtain a written demand for disclosure on “official letterhead” prior to release of customer information. “When T-Mobile has a reasonable belief that an emergency exists where there’s immediate danger of death or serious physical injury to any person, whether that person is a T-Mobile subscriber, T-Mobile may disclose any subscriber information in its possession to emergency personnel, including the location of a particular phone or past billing records,” it said. While public safety petitioners had raised the question of whether property loss constitutes such an emergency, T-Mobile said it doesn’t place property loss in a category requiring the disclosure of certain customer information and will only release a customer’s name, address and phone number in response to a burglary or building fire report. The law doesn’t consider property loss to be an emergency requiring the release of more information, T-Mobile said. Public safety petitioners had also asked the FCC to rule that carriers must release caller location information to emergency dispatchers even if the customer proprietary network information requested was associated with a customer who was not the caller to 911. AT&T Wireless also cited concerns over the limited statutory scope for such disclosures. “Given that there is little ambiguity in either the statutory language or the congressional intent evidenced in the legislative history, it would not be appropriate for the Commission to grant petitioners’ request to expand the scope of the statutes,” AT&T Wireless said. Verizon Wireless said it backed DoJ providing guidance because the public safety petition seeks interpretation of the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), which is a federal criminal statute. A DoJ pronouncement could take into account homeland security legislative changes that have altered the ECPA, Verizon Wireless said. “Unless and until the DoJ passes on these important legal questions, the FCC has no support for the position supported by public safety and should deny the petition,” Verizon Wireless said.