Lawyer Steven Goren of Bingham Farms, Mich., filed a class-action complaint against Comcast and its cable subsidiary Tuesday. Goren, who predicted "months or years" of litigation, is seeking attorney's fees plus damages of at least $100 per day for every Comcast subscriber during the period from December to Feb. 13, when Comcast pledged to stop the practice.
Comcast, which is seeking U.S. approval for a $45 billion merger with its largest rival, AT&T Broadband, said in a statement Friday that it respects the privacy of its Internet subscribers and "has not in any way compromised their privacy or linked Internet usage data to personally identifying information about any specific subscriber."
It said Goren's lawsuit was "without merit, and Comcast intends to defend itself vigorously."
The Associated Press reported in early February that Comcast had started recording each customer's visit to Web sites as part of a technology overhaul to save money and speed up its network. Comcast pledged to stop immediately a day later, after a consumer backlash and after Rep. Ed Markey, D-Mass., criticized the tracking in a letter to Comcast President Brian Roberts.
Goren, who usually handles medical malpractice cases, argues that Comcast violated the 1984 Cable Act, which prohibits companies from collecting personal information from customers without obtaining "prior written or electronic consent." The act was originally intended to protect the privacy of cable TV customers.
Markey, ranking Democrat on the House Commerce subcommittee on telecommunications and the Internet, raised similar questions about possible violations of the 1984 law, writing in his letter that he was concerned about "the nature and extent of any transgressions of the law that may have resulted in consumer privacy being compromised." Markey later commended Comcast for reversing the practice.
Comcast has said customers must agree to the company's subscriber and privacy policies, which give Comcast permission to review usage information "in aggregate form" to improve its network speeds.
The 1984 law allows cable operators to collect private information if it can show it needs the information to operate its service. But outside experts, including the vendor whose powerful software Comcast was using, said Comcast was recording more information about the online activities of customers than necessary for the technology enhancements.
"We now know the industry standard is to cache material anonymously," said David Sobel, a lawyer for the Washington-based Electronic Privacy Information Center, a civil-liberties group. "What is it about the personally identifiable material that makes this necessary to provide the service? No one has yet come up with an explanation for how that optimizes the service in any way."
Goren filed the complaint on behalf of a single Comcast customer, Jeffrey Klimas of Royal Oak, Mich. Klimas could not be reached for comment.
Comcast's recording was part of an overhaul requiring new and existing customers to use behind-the-scenes technology known as a "proxy," which funnels a person's Web surfing through powerful, centralized Internet computers controlled by Comcast. Customers previously could volunteer to use the proxy computers, but they were activated automatically for all subscribers under the new system.
To speed performance, these proxy computers retain copies of the most-popular Web sites that customers visit. Comcast said it recorded which were the most popular Web sites to determine which ones it should copy to its centralized computers, although leading industry experts said there was no need to match Web surfing back to the specific Internet addresses of subscribers.
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