Congress Wants to Stop Your Smartphone From Knowing Too Much About You
Rep. Edward Markey (D-MA) has drafted legislation, the “Mobile Device Privacy Act,” that would require both smartphone manufacturers and carriers to inform customers of monitoring software when purchasing a smartphone. Customers would have to give consent before the software can collect and transmit any information. The legislation would also outline security policies that phone companies must follow to protect personal information received from smartphones. Markey expressed the need for such legislation stating that “while consumers rely on their phones, their phones relay all sorts of information about them, often without their knowledge or consent.”
While protecting smartphone users’ privacy, it is very possible that such legislation would not actually have much impact, as smartphone manufacturers and carriers may not allow use of the phones without consent to the monitoring. Then it would become a choice of either allowing the phone to monitor one’s activity or not using the phone all. Which are basically the options now anyways.
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