EPIC Urges FCC To End The Data Retention Mandate
EPIC has sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission urging the FCC to act immediately on a Petition submitted by EPIC and a coalition of civil rights organizations, technical experts and legal scholars exactly three years ago. The Petition called for an end to the FCC rule requiring the mass retention of phone records, known as the “data retention mandate.” EPIC explained in the Petition that the rule was “unduly burdensome and ineffectual and posed an ongoing threat to the privacy and security of American consumers. The U.S. Supreme Court recently declared that cell phone location records are protected under the Fourth Amendment in Carpenter v. United States. EPIC wrote in the letter that “as we anticipated in the original Petition, the retention of cell phone data implicates constitutional interests.” All of the comments received by the FCC on this topic favored an end to the mandate.