The FCC’s Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau is soliciting comments on the Privacy and Security Plan for the National Emergency Address Database (NEAD) submitted last month by NEAD, LLC and national wireless carriers Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Sprint. The NEAD is a database of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth access points designed to help wireless carriers pinpoint the dispatchable location of 911 callers when the caller is indoors. According to the Plan, the NEAD will primarily gather information on wireless access points from service provider records, records from large business establishments, and voluntary input from individual consumers. The Bureau seeks comment on the sufficiency of the proposed privacy and security protections that will be integrated into the NEAD platform. The Bureau is also interested in feedback on the Plan’s personnel management and training protocol, as well as proposed risk assessments of the NEAD platform. The full text of the Plan is available here. Comments are due by March 20, 2017, and reply comments must be filed no later than March 30, 2017.
