Embarq pressured by politicians over NebuAd

A trio of politicians in the U.S. House of Representatives is continuing a campaign against the concept of Web monitoring to display advertisements, most recently with a series of letters this week exchanged with broadband provider Embarq.

Embarq provides Internet connectivity to about 1.3 million subscribers, making it the fourth-largest DSL provider in the country. It has acknowledged experimenting earlier this year with NebuAd, which intercepts and performs deep packet inspection of what's flowing through a company's network in hopes of delivering relevant, anonymized ads.

In two letters (No. 1, and No. 2) to the House trio, Embarq defended the legality of its test of NebuAd: "It has always been Embarq's belief that its conduct of the test was lawful and otherwise permissible." The three members of Congress are House Energy and Commerce Chairman John Dingell, a Democrat; Joe Barton, a Republican; Ed Markey, a Democrat and chairman of an Internet subcommittee.

The test involved 26,000 broadband subscribers and was based in Gardner, Kansas. Embarq subscribers were not given a written notice in the mail permitting them to opt out; instead, the only notification they received was a modification to the privacy policy saying "the Web sites that you visit or online searches that you conduct" may be used to "deliver or facilitate the delivery of targeted advertisements." Only 15 subscribers opted out of the test.

Embarq said that it believes its "brief" test was consistent with current online advertising business models, and the Federal Trade Commission's voluntary best practices framework.

Last week, Markey convened a hearing in which politicians assailed NebuAd for alleged privacy violations, calling its opt-out practices "contemptible" and in violation of "everything the country's been founded on." Around the same time, he and the others had asked Embarq to answer a series of questions. Another NebuAd-testing company that had been pressured by Markey, cable operator Charter Communications, announced last month that it was suspending use of the technology.

Making matters complicated is that the legality of the type of monitoring that NebuAd does is not entirely clear; intercepting customers' communications as they flow through the network begins to look a lot like wiretapping.

The Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 (ECPA); the Communications Act of 1934; and the Cable TV Privacy Act of 1984 all may apply. Cable providers may need to obtain affirmative opt-in consent from customers, putting them at a competitive disadvantage to, say, AT&T and Verizon. State wiretapping laws also may apply.

For its part, NebuAd has posted a legal memo designed to defuse those criticisms. It argues that the 1986 changes to wiretap law have not been clarified by courts, and that the Cable Act may not apply to "any record of aggregate data which does not identify particular persons."

[Get_Bent]

I agree 100%, this _does_ look a lot like wiretapping. NebuAd isn't just looking at the sites that you're visiting, they're scrutinizing the data in your packets. To use the phone analogy, NebuAd isn't looking at your call list, they're actually listening to your conversations. Congress needs to stop kissing industry butt for a change and ban this activity.

[umbrae]

If you look at this technology, not only is it like wire-tapping, but it is outright fraud. Most of these technologies act as the site you are trying to visit and set cookies outside of browser security settings (avoiding 3rd party).

Internet should be considered a utility and should be regulated like water and power.

[Blazzbin]

Invasion of privacy, and no written notice!!! Embarq is also throttling connection speeds of bittorrent users! Embarq = BS

[jamalystic]

I think the ideal way to improve on internet transparency is to have a new business model. Firms like Embarq, nebuad and the likes will always try to do it their way. Why not give the consumer control of the the last mile as suggested by this piece: Improving Internet Transparency(http://www.internetevolution.com/author.asp?section_id=506&doc_id=154745&F_src=flftwo)

[CyR00k]

Ironically any ad system is in the worst interest of the ISPs since they will lose their safe - harbor protection under the DCMA as soon as they state making money from internet traffic thus costing the ISP billions of dollars. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the RIAA and MPAA both took a really hard look at the 26000 people that were tracked by NebuAd since Embarq is now legally liable for any piracy that may have taken place.

[cmccarle2000]

I pay 50.00+ dollars for my internet service via Embarq and my only question to them is, Why steal us blind. If Embarq wants to make even more money from me then they have to lower my internet service bill to less then 10.00 dollars a month! Then they can spy away, I just ignore internet adds. I have always thought the Internet was free and if one wanted to buy something then they could go to a store or "search" for what they wanted and then let the search engines bring up the results. For Embarq, I live in this area where you did this and I am going to my cable's ISP.