Month: March 2017

This week Congress overturned internet privacy rules that would have applied to carriers like Sonic, and this presents a good opportunity for us to reiterate our position on privacy.

Sonic has long supported privacy efforts which would protect the rights of our members, and has engaged in ongoing advocacy on this issue for many years. We disagree with industry members who have lobbied for the ability to monitor internet usage by consumers. The health of the internet ecosystem critically depends upon confidence by creators and consumers that their usage will not be monitored or sold.

As we have said before, we believe many of the issues related to carrier practices and policies are fundamentally a competitive market failure. This includes net neutrality and privacy, but also product design and pricing, usage caps, customer service and more. If consumers could choose from fifteen different internet service providers, the competitive market would reward the best policies, prices, reliability and practices.

Sonic and a few other competitive internet service providers aside, the US does not have an adequately competitive market. And until that is achieved, regulation of some carrier policies and practices is important.

The pending repeal of the broadband privacy rules provides an opportunity for Sonic to clarify our policies, and to call out some specific policy points:

• Sonic never sells our member information or usage data, nor do we voluntarily provide government or law enforcement with access to any data about users for surveillance purposes.
• Sonic minimizes data retention, keeping data from 0 – 14 days for dynamic IP addresses and other logs and commits to EFF’s privacy-friendly Do Not Track policy. We believe that user data should not be retained longer than necessary, and that users deserve to have a clear understanding of personal data held by service providers.
• Sonic is also against the re-authorization of Section 702 (the law behind the PRISM and Upstream programs). Governments and other entities should not collect huge quantities of phone, email or other internet usage data directly from the physical infrastructure of any communications provider.

We have also updated further our policy document, adding new language regarding notification of customers when legal process is served under seal.

Protection of customer privacy is one of our core values at Sonic. We seek to provide as much transparency as possible regarding legal processes and customer privacy, so in furtherance of those efforts, we are releasing our sixth annual Transparency Report.

In 2016 we saw processed just one civil subpoenas, as compared with two in 2015, zero in 2014, one in 2013 compared with nine each in 2011 and 2012. Law enforcement subpoena activity increased compared to 2015, with 20 orders, but only 30% of these were provided responsive data. Note for those comparing year to year activity: Sonic’s membership is growing so it is not possible to make a direct comparison in volume from year to year.

As in years past, we can only publish the broad bracket related to National Security Letter (NSL) items, we are limited to a disclosure of a range rather than a specific quantity.

Internet and telephone service providers have a great responsibility both to protect their law-abiding customers and the public. We continually work to achieve both of these goals.

Protection of customer privacy is one of our core values at Sonic. We seek to provide as much transparency as possible regarding legal processes and customer privacy, so in furtherance of those efforts, we are releasing our fifth annual Transparency Report.

In 2015 we saw processed two civil subpoenas, as compared with zero in 2014, one in 2013 compared with nine each in 2011 and 2012. Law enforcement subpoena activity decreased compared to 2014. Note also that Sonic’s membership is growing so it is not possible to make a direct comparison between the years.

As in years past, we can only publish the broad bracket related to National Security Letter (NSL) items,  we are limited to a disclosure of a range rather than a specific quantity.

Internet and telephone service providers have a great responsibility both to protect their law-abiding customers and the public. We continually work to achieve both of these goals.