*Pages 1--1 from Microsoft Word - 54995.doc* STATEMENT OF COMMISSIONER MICHAEL J. COPPS Re: Implementation of the Telecommunications Act of 1996; Petition for Rulemaking to Enhance Security and Authentication Standards for Access to Customer Proprietary Network Information, Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (CC Docket No. 96- 115, RM- 11277) American consumers deserve the security of knowing that their personal phone records are not for sale. By starting this proceeding, we pledge to protect consumers from unscrupulous data brokers who have built a business on selling information about our private conversations. The Commission also commits to adjusting its rules to further safeguard privacy and prevent the unauthorized disclosure of customer proprietary network information (CPNI). For these reasons, I am pleased to support today’s effort. Privacy issues must always be on the Commission’s front burner— but sometimes they languish. We have a three- and- a- half- year- old Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on CPNI safeguards and enforcement that needs to be acted on. We have a three- year- old proceeding on the dissemination of CPNI to unaffiliated third parties, initiated by a petition from the Arizona Corporation Commission, that also has stalled. And last year, we reclassified wireline broadband Internet access services, but left for another day the chilling question of whether or not privacy protections followed this regulatory remix. It’s time to move ahead. I hope today we begin a new chapter. We live in a day and age where our cherished right to privacy suffers from a daily fusillade of data gathering. Companies can monitor what we do, stores can study what we buy, technologies can track what we watch, see and hear. Consumers rightfully expect that regulatory agencies like this one will do something to protect them from this bombardment, to give them a measure of confidence that not every aspect of their personal information is available to the highest bidder. 1