Statement from CTIA

CTIA-The Wireless Association® Senior Vice President and General Counsel Michael Altschul issued the following statement after he testified on location-based services before the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Communications, Technology, and the Internet and Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection:

“For more than fifteen years, CTIA has been at the forefront of efforts to ensure location privacy while balancing the legitimate needs by law enforcement and in cases of emergency. Along with our members and other interested parties, we voluntarily developed the industry’s ‘Best Practices and Guidelines’ in 2008 that would promote and protect the privacy of wireless customers’ location information.”

“When the Wireless Communications and Public Safety Enhancement Act of 1999 was passed, there was a widely held assumption that location-based services would involve a wireless carrier having access to a user’s location information and then using or sharing that information to provide a location-based service. Due to the rapid evolution toward open platforms, the tremendous consumer adoption of smart phones, and the increased prevalence of GPS-enabled location-based service applications that can be downloaded and enabled without any involvement or knowledge by a wireless carrier, CTIA is in the midst of updating the guidelines. While the new guidelines have yet to be finalized, rest assured they will balance public safety’s needs with consumers’ privacy.

“As technology continues to evolve, we would encourage Congress to clarify the terms under which location information may be released to law enforcement. When dealing with these issues, we also urge Congress to recognize the interstate nature of location-based services and the mobility of wireless users so they take a national approach so customers’ privacy are maintained while fostering innovation, investment, and the introduction of new location based services by wireless carriers, device manufacturers, operating systems developers, and applications creators.”

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