This content was originally published by the Longmont Observer and is licensed under a Creative Commons license.
Speaking of those federal laws-what, exactly, happened?
The online privacy rules that the FCC had put into place protected consumers in 2016 forbidding internet providers from sharing sensitive personal information such as app and browsing histories, mobile location data and other information generated while using the internet was recently wiped away by the current House, Senate, and White House.
As the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation) point's out, this repeal of privacy rights will have a profound impact on your online privacy rights if you're using a commercial ISP.
Commercial Internet service providers will continue to monitor their customer's behavior online and, without permission, use those customers personal and financial information to sell highly targeted ads (among other things). Sadly, this isn't new. Google, Facebook, and many other services that many of us use daily to do this on a regular basis. Our expectations of privacy over the last decade have steadily decreased as we exchange our personal information for 'free' services.
In light of this, it might be good to consider the common knowledge among the digital elite in Silicon Valley: "If the product you're using is free, you, and the information you're giving them, are the product".
The good news for Longmont's NextLight customers is our municipal ISP has no profit motive, no shareholders or venture capitalists, hedge funds or activist investors requiring a profitable return on their money. Other than low-cost municipal bonds with very low-interest rates that are being paid off reasonably quickly due to the high uptake rate of people subscribing to NextLight, there are simply no outside forces pressuring NextLight to behave like the commercial ISP's.
Another thing to keep in mind- if you're using an existing commercial ISP/phone/TV provider who's suddenly offering to 'save' you $100 or even more each month - thank NextLight for creating an environment where an (almost) monopoly on internet access services no longer exists. We're one of the few towns in America in this situation. You also might consider passing up that temporary hot deal anyway and invest in your own city by going with NextLight. At an intro cost of $50 a month, for life, with no '12 month special,' that's about as real as it gets.
Remember this: The money you spend on commercial ISP's get's sent to some large corporation outside of longmont and we never see that money again. It's not recycled into our community, it's siphoned off and out of our community. Our NextLight network is ours. Owned, operated and managed by the City and residents of Longmont. The money you spend on NextLight stays in Longmont and get's spent in Longmont.
That, along with a simple, clear and concise statement that your privacy is respected and protected by official NextLight policy puts Longmont in an almost unique place: A city that provides it's citizens the essential infrastructure required to access the world's knowledge on the internet at an exceptionally low cost, and a promise to ensure your privacy while you're doing it.
This submission is under our 'member voices' area and is the opinion of the author and does not, necessarily, reflect the opinion of the Longmont Observer.
By Scott Converse
In light of the recent discussion about net neutrality, online privacy and what, exactly, does NextLight do in this area I asked Tom Roiniotis, the Director of Longmont's NextLight Gigabit Internet Service what their policy is. This is what I got back from Mr. Roiniotis:
"This statement has been online within our Terms and Conditions for a few years now: 4.4 Under federal law, Customer has the right to confidentiality, and LPC has a duty to protect and keep confidential information about the amount, type, and destination of Customer’s Digital Voice Service (CPNI) and internet usage. Customer’s personal and usage information is not public and will not be released except to satisfy laws, regulations, or other governmental or legal requirements or requests, to operate the services properly, or to protect itself and its subscribers."
Could NextLight take a more nuanced and detailed stance? Yes. Should it? That remains to be seen considering the erosion of the federal laws cited, but, you can make the argument that a simple clean and straightforward policy like this isn't a bad thing to have. Still, we'll likely need to revisit this as we learn how the federal laws have changed.