Media Contact: 
Travis Litman 202-418-2400
Travis.Litman@fcc.gov

For Immediate Release

STATEMENT OF FCC COMMISSIONER JESSICA ROSENWORCEL ON TODAY’S GEOLOCATION ANNOUNCEMENT

WASHINGTON, January 31, 2020:  In May 2018, press reports first revealed that U.S. phone companies were selling access to their customers’ real-time location information to data aggregators.  Additional reporting later revealed that hundreds of bounty hunters and related businesses had access to this highly sensitive data.  To safeguard the privacy and safety of American consumers, in May 2019, FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel sent letters to major phone companies to confirm whether they lived up to their commitments to end these location aggregation services.  Today, the FCC announced that it has finally “concluded that one or more wireless carriers apparently violated federal law.”  In response to today’s announcement, FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel issued the following statement:


“For more than a year, the FCC was silent after news reports alerted us that for just a few hundred dollars, shady middlemen could sell your location within a few hundred meters based on your wireless phone data.  It’s chilling to consider what a black market could do with this data.  It puts the safety and privacy of every American with a wireless phone at risk. 

Today this agency finally announced that this was a violation of the law.  Millions and millions of Americans use a wireless device every day and didn’t sign up for or consent to this surveillance.  It’s a shame that it took so long for the FCC to reach a conclusion that was so obvious.”  



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Office of Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel: (202) 418-2400
Twitter: @JRosenworcel
www.fcc.gov/leadership/jessica-rosenworcel

This is an unofficial announcement of Commission action.  Release of the full text of a Commission order constitutes official action.  See MCI v. FCC, 515 F.2d 385 (D.C. Cir. 1974).