• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, August 7, 2024

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is backing AT&T in its appeal of a $57 million fine imposed by the Federal Communications Commission for privacy violations.

The business group says in a friend-of-the-court brief that the FCC “flagrantly violated the Constitution,” arguing that instead of handing down a fine, it should have taken AT&T to court.

“The FCC imposed its gargantuan fine through an adjudication at the FCC in which the FCC gave itself the roles of judge, jury, and prosecutor,” the business group writes in its brief, filed Monday with the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The organization is weighing in on a battle dating to the Trump administration, when the FCC -- then controlled by Republicans -- first proposed fining AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile for allegedly sharing customers' location data with third parties.

Specifically, the FCC said in a “notice of apparent liability” that the carriers sold access to geolocation data to aggregators that resold the information to outside companies. The FCC issued the notice around one year after Vice Media's Motherboard reported that a journalist had been able to pay a “bounty hunter” $300 to track a phone's location to a neighborhood in Queens, New York.

The major U.S. carriers have said they no longer sell location data.

Earlier this year, the FCC followed through on the notice of apparent liability and fined AT&T around $57 million, Verizon around $47 million, and T-Mobile $92 million (including $12 million for Sprint, which merged with T-Mobile in 2020).

The agency voted 3-2 to impose the fines, with Republican commissioners Brendan Carr and Nathan Simington dissenting.

All three wireless carriers are appealing the fines.

AT&T, which filed its substantive arguments last week, contends the fine should be vacated for several reasons, including that the FCC imposed sanctions without proving the allegations in court.

AT&T also contends the agency lacked authority to issue the fines because the location data at issue wasn't tied solely to voice services, like telephone calls. Instead, the location information was tied to non-voice location-based services such as the Life Alert program, which sends medical help to people, or roadside assistance company AAA, the telecom argues.

The company says the distinction between “call information” and location information not tied to phone calls is critical, arguing that the FCC is only authorized to police the confidentiality of “call information.”

The trade group CTIA--The Wireless Association also weighed in on AT&T's behalf. That organization urged the court to rule that the FCC lacked authority to police the location data at issue because it wasn't tied to telephone calls.