LOCAL GOVTS. RAISE CONCERNS OVER COMCAST PRIVACY POLICY
Local govts. have expressed concerns over Comcast’s revised privacy policy for cable subscribers in the use of personally identifiable information -- even as they acknowledged improvements over last year’s version in readability and customer comprehension. Comcast for the first time worked with a National Assn. of Telecom Officers & Advisors (NATOA)special committee to revise its privacy policy, and the new policy is going out to customers (CD Jan 27 p2). Saying the company had made improvements, NATOA said its Privacy Policy Committee believed the document was “still written with too broad an interpretation of the federal law, particularly relating to the use of personally identifiable information.” Local govt. officials we spoke with said they had “indications” Comcast’s actual practices were less worrisome, but they wanted the company to codify the practices to prevent future misuse.
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Most local govt. concerns centered on what officials saw as the possibility identifiable information might be shared with outsiders. “The biggest concern is that they [Comcast] have taken a too-broad interpretation on giving personally identifiable information to 3rd party vendors,” NATOA Pres Coraile Wilson told us. She said there were indications that Comcast’s actual practices with customer information was different. “But we would have liked to see them codify their practices,” said Wilson, who also is exec. dir. of the North Suburban Communications Commission in Roseville, Minn.
Codifying company practices would deny flexibility in coping with technology changes, Comcast Chief Privacy Officer Gerard Lewis told us. The company told the NATOA committee and Portland, Ore., franchising authorities Comcast’s day-to- day practices on dealing with customer information were stricter than its policy, he said. But the privacy policy was drafted in recognition that federal law “permits a box of a certain size outside of which you cannot go without liability.” Lewis pointed out that 5 years ago, on-demand services weren’t available. “Had we codified narrow restrictive practices at that point and needed to amend them later, that’s obviously a much more difficult thing to do.” The privacy policy was crafted to permit flexibility in the company’s business so it wouldn’t be so restrictive that “we can’t incorporate new products or services,” Lewis said. The company wanted to ensure the policy fully complied with federal law, customers’ privacy rights were respected and they were given clear notice, he said. Lewis said Comcast’s discussions the NATOA group had been frank and included disagreements over “certain points and interpretations.”
Wilson said customers were concerned about what companies did with personally identifiable information because of identity theft and were “irritated” over intrusions such as spam. She said customers would like to “feel confident that their information is not going to be sold or made available to people who are going to take advantage of it or steal their identity.” Customers also would like 3rd-party vendors with which Comcast contracted for cable services to be bound by its privacy policies, she said.
Jane Lawton, Montgomery County (Md.) cable administrator and a member of the NATOA privacy committee, said that while Comcast maintained it didn’t misuse personal information and didn’t disclose it without prior consent, its “policy is written much broader than that.” In the context of digital interactive TV, she said, one concern was the company had greater ability to collect customers’ viewing habits and combine their personally identifiable information with 3rd- party databases. Lawton hastened to add she wasn’t suggesting the company was doing that. The other concern involved disclosure to 3rd parties whose use of the information was not governed by Comcast’s rules, she said.
Lawton and Wilson said local franchising authorities had authority to review and approve cable privacy policies. However, that was an area of disagreement with cable companies, Wilson said. Cable operators say they comply with federal law that preempts local and state law, she said: “Our position is that this is a customer service area in which state and local governments can in fact supersede federal law.” While some local franchising agreements simply codified the federal law, others had their own privacy- specific language, the officials said. Wilson said local govts. believed it was “much more productive” to work out differences with companies than to “have to go to court all the time.”