What bewilders me is that an FCC commissioner is weighing in on this at all.
FCC's mandate is to regulate telecom infrastructure - devices, bandwidth allocation, licensing, etc. Nothing at fcc.gov mentions anything about a mandate to regulate content being distributed over that infrastructure. There is a long history of debate over whether FCC using broadcast licenses to enforce decency standards, but this is the first I've heard of them implying that iOS and Android are subject to the commission's authority.
If it's a national security issue, it seems that Homeland should be addressing it; if it's consumer fraud over privacy violations, it would be FTC.
The letter (which is not on the FCC.gov website, so I found it through the commissioner's Twitter post) doesn't go into that at all, and it seems like pretty significant overreach that a commissioner can demand software companies to choose their customers according to his will.
FCC's mandate is to regulate telecom infrastructure - devices, bandwidth allocation, licensing, etc. Nothing at fcc.gov mentions anything about a mandate to regulate content being distributed over that infrastructure. There is a long history of debate over whether FCC using broadcast licenses to enforce decency standards, but this is the first I've heard of them implying that iOS and Android are subject to the commission's authority.
If it's a national security issue, it seems that Homeland should be addressing it; if it's consumer fraud over privacy violations, it would be FTC.
The letter (which is not on the FCC.gov website, so I found it through the commissioner's Twitter post) doesn't go into that at all, and it seems like pretty significant overreach that a commissioner can demand software companies to choose their customers according to his will.
https://twitter.com/BrendanCarrFCC/status/154182358595770777...