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Comment by Clanan | Hacker News Reader

Tom Wheeler, former FCC chairman and cable/wireless lobbyist, fails to charitably address why his opponents did what they did. To Republicans and opponents of his FCC chairmanship, this was about regulatory authority, not "selling your data to ISPs". They believe the FTC, not the FCC, should be the main privacy regulator as it has in the past. They also contend that ISPs are already disallowed from scooping and selling data without consent, and that the FCC already has authority to prosecute, via sections 201, 202 and 222 of the Communications Act.

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> They believe the FTC, not the FCC, should be the main privacy regulator as it has in the past.

If they believed that, they would pass legislation to correct the law on which the court relied striking down FTC regulatory authority in this area and allow the FTC to actually do that; not doing that when reversing the FCC rules which mirrored the FTC rules which were struck down demonstrates that that is a pretext, not a genuine motivation.

> they would pass legislation to correct the law on which the court relied striking down FTC regulatory authority in this area

The FCC rule is being struck down using the Congressional Review Act [1]. CRA provides "an expedited legislative process" [2]. Giving the FTC authority in this area would require passing a real law. (That said, I agree with you regrind the explanation of motive.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Review_Act

[2] https://web.archive.org/web/20150402230759/http://assets.ope...

> The FCC rule is being struck down using the Congressional Review Act [1]. CRA provides "an expedited legislative process" [2]. Giving the FTC authority in this area would require passing a real law.

Right. But if the real basis of reversing the FCC action is not that the substance is wrong but the regulator is wrong, then you'd expect the fix to the law to allow the FTC to regulate to, at a minimum, be introduced first and highlighted in the debate over reversing the FCC action. (And, in fact, regular laws can be expedited as well, as was demonstrated procedurally with the AHCA, even if the votes were never there to follow through on the expedited process that was set up.)

It's not clear to me how the CRA actually makes anything faster in this case. The "real law" approach would only need a simple law, which surely could be drafted quickly. Both a "real law" and a CRA action require the same simple majority in the House and Senate, which they have.

CRA actions can't be filibustered, regular legislation can. OTOH, while Democrats might filibuster repeal of the FCC action if they could, I can't imagine a clear positive grant of regulatory mandate to the FTC on this issue would be opposed by Democrats, so if that were really the majority's concern, I don't see how the procedural distinction between CRA action and regular legislation would be a real issue.

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