Net Neutrality: FCC Strips Protections From Your Text Messages

After scrapping net neutrality earlier this year, as AVN.com has covered, allowing the big telecommunications companies greater control over what Americans see and hear on the internet, the FCC is now coming for citizens' personal text messages. The FCC on Wednesday voted on a change to how text messages are classified under the government’s regulatory structure. By a 3-1 vote, with all three Republicans on the commission voting in favor, the FCC reclassified SMS text messages as an “information service,” rather than classifying texting as a “telecommunications service,” the tech news site CNet reported.  While the change may seem technical, in fact it carries far reaching implications for how text messages are treated by telecom companies. The new clasisfication “can have real effects on our ability to use text messaging for political speech and supporting charities,” according to the digital rights watchdog group Electronic Frontier Foundation.  FCC Chair Ajit Pai said that the new classification will allow carriers to block annoying spam messages and “robo-texts,” but the sole Democrat who voted on the measure, casting the lone “no” vote, said that Pai’s explanation was phony. "Today's decision offers consumers no new ability to prevent robotexts," Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said. "It simply provides that carriers can block our text messages and censor the very content of those messages themselves."  Carriers have engaged in text message censorship before, according to EFF. “In 2007, Verizon blocked text messages from NARAL  [a pro-choice group] on the grounds of 'controversy.' In 2010, T-Mobile was accused of blocking texts from a medical marijuana service. That same year, Sprint demanded Catholic Relief Services end a texting-based drive to raise money that was started as a response to the earthquake in Haiti,” the group reports. By classifying texts as an “information service,” a category which allowed only minimal government oversight, there will be no way to stop phone companies from blocking or censoring text message whenever and for whatever reason they choose. “On the one-year anniversary of the FCC's misguided net neutrality decision—which gave your broadband provider the power to block websites and censor online content—this agency is celebrating by expanding those powers to also include your text messages," Rosenworcel said. "No one should mistake today's action as an effort to help consumers limit spam and robotexts," said Harold Feld, of the open internet advocacy group Public Knowledge. "There is a reason why carriers are applauding while more than 20 consumer protection advocates—along with 10 senators—have cried foul." Photo By Tammy McGary/Wikimedia Commons