Senator Prevents Action on Online Privacy Bill

securitas writes "The NYTimes tells us Senator Trent Lott forced the Senate Commerce Committee to adjourn this morning as it was on the verge of adopting an online privacy bill requiring ISPs and commercial Web sites to get customers' permission before they could disclose important personal information. That would include financial, medical, ethnic, religious and political information along with Social Security data and sexual orientation. I urge Trent Lott's constituents to make your voices heard on this. Same goes for readers whose senators serve on the Senate Commerce Committee." Salon and EPIC have written about Hollings' bill.

Comments

Re:Yesterday's News

[nexex]

They are protesting for the anniversy of the first Bush judical nominee and the dem's refusing to even schedule hearings for them while our federal courts become even more slow due to the lack of judges. only 10% of the federal bench has judges. this protest has nothing to do with the privacy bill, it was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. " Another area where Daschle's penchant for inactivity is evident is in judicial nominations. Only eight of Mr. Bush's 30 appeals court nominees have been confirmed. District Court Judge Charles Pickering was defeated in the Judiciary Committee (which is not mentioned in the Constitution as part of the confirmation process). Three other nominees don't seem to be able to get a vote despite the fact that they have had hearings. Eighteen can't even get a hearing, though their nominations have been pending for almost a year."

/. just loves Republican bashing

[dh003i]

Being a former Republican, I know this. Why don't we look at this so-called bill before we crucify Sen. Trent Lott...also, for preliminary analysis, I think the bill is crap because that fuck Sen. Hollings supports it: the same person who sponsored the SSSCA. I've converted to a moderate libertarian, mainly because of the Christian Right Wing and the Pro-Business-no-matter-what wings in the Republican party, which are two of the three wings in the Repblican party. The other wing -- the one I like -- is the wing that's main focus is crime, and says if someone kills, rapes, or molests, he should be fried (i.e., George W. Bush, referred to as the executioner by Jay Leno).

Anyways, I'm no longer a Republican b/c I disagree with them on a number of important issues: abortion and gay-rights being the most important. I also think democrats are assinite on this issue; the "hate-crimes" bullshit supported by Democrats is crap: Murder (not including vengence murders for raped daughters) should be punished by death, no matter what. Same thing with rape, child molestation, torture, wife-beating, and in my opinion, any other violent crime. Perhaps even an impalement or two for the serial killer/rapists...in Translyvania, when Vlad Dracula ruled, he impaled all criminals; needless to say, there wasn't much crime during his reign. I also think Democrats are full of shit on racism issues: if I own a private company, and the public owns no stock in it, I should be allowed to have whatever assinite hiring/firing/customer practices I choose. If I have assinite practices, people will protest, and I'll go out of business.

The "Pro-Life" wackos in the Republican party freak me out. Especially these fucks who say, "Parents should have to consent before their child has an abortion". This parent's rights crap. Parents rights means that the parents have the right to use corporal punishment on their children, but teacher's don't (and if they do, the parents will rip off their balls and skull fuck them). Parents rights means that parents have the right to check to make sure their kids aren't wearing thongs, but that perverted sick fuck Vice Principle's of schools like this bitch Rita Wilson don't. Parents rights, however, does not mean the poarent has the right to deny their child basic human rights. Forcing a person to give birth is cruel and inhumane, especially a teenager, who'll probably have to have a C-section. Put another way -- and here's something these brainless Pro-Life fucks can understand -- If you think its a parents right to force their child to give birth, then you must also think its a parent's right to force their child to have an abortion. Doesn't seem right, does it?

On taxes, I tend to agree with Republican's -- I work hard for my money, and government fucks don't deserve it. Neither do these poor fucks who are "in need", or "the children". What did some poor person ever do to deserve my money? The bum will probably spend it on drugs anyways. The same losers we pay welfare to are also probably the people that use that welfare check to wait in line 5 months to see Star Wars: but that's okay, the force is with them, right? On the other hand, Democrats do have a point that money means alot more to the middle class than to the rich: take away 40% of a billionare's yearly earning, and he can still live a great life. If he runs into financial problems, fuck him. Fifteen Porsches, a few Ferraris, a Limo, and a private Jet are not necessities. Personally, I think anyone who makes an income of over a million dollars a year should not be allowed to declare bankrupcy for the next 20 years. Businesses also shouldn't be allowed to declare bankrupcy. Bankrupcy is for some poor/middle-class fuck who never pulled in the kind of income to deal with a moderate amount of debt. Its not for fucks like MC Hammer who racked in 10 million a year and somehow run out.

So, back to taxes, I think that the amount of money we pay in taxes should be proportional to the fraction of how much money we made in a year, versus the entire "income" of the nation in a year, GNP. If I account for 0.00000001% of the GNP, then I should have to pay proportional to that; maybe it would be something like 100 times the fraction of "your money"/GNP. So if I make twice as much money as you, I pay twice the percentage of taxes. This way, I never end up making less money per year after taxes than someone who racked in less than me (which is bullshit).

The armed forces and the environment are things I'm independent on. They're both important, but neither should be placed above balancing the budget (the government shouldn't be allowed to have a non-balanced budget; its irresponsible and sets a bad exmaple). Also, "protecting the environment" at the expense of people is bullshit; sorry, but those fucking sucker-fish in Ohio aren't important enough to deny farmers needed water. The military I see as being more important, but I think we should spend money more wisely. I'm not talking about "Star Wars" here; that was just a plan by Reagan to get the Russians to give up. I'm talking about just making smart decisions.

Unlike Democrats, I believe in a free market. This business of subsidation and all sorts of other communistic non-sense is crap. But a free market does not mean without rules. A free market does not mean we allow the kind of crap Enron, Global Crossings, and MS partook in. Lets make an analogy to cards. A free market is like a game of cards where all sides are playing fairly and no one has an innate advantage. What the Democrats want is to look at the players and subsidize the dumbest one's by giving them extra chips or something. What the Republican's tolerate is when one fuck is pulling cards out of his sleave.

Anyways, back to the issue at hand -- digital rights, consumer rights, and privacy issues. On these issues, the majority Democrats and Republicans stand in unison: against US, the WE THE PEOPLE. Now, on to this bill. As I said before, I doubt this bill is anything that's good for us. I know this is a little bit of a fallacy (i.e., messenger with message), but what are the odds this bill actually increases privacy is that fuck Hollings supports it? Hollings is as much an arch-enemy to digitally-rights minded people as is Bill Gates.

So, lets look at the situation. Upon skimming the Bill, I've determined its not bad, and fault Trent Lott for stalling it. However, the bill is clearly weak. The penalty for disclosing "non-sensitive private information" is $200 dollars? What a crock of shit. My privacy, even if "non-sensitive," is worth more than 200 dollars. The right to privacy is gaurenteed by the fucking constitution, shouldn't violations of it warrant jail time, just like violations of the right to life? Upon showing the harm a person suffered, he's entitled to "the monetary loss from the damage" or "$5,000". Again, weak. Larger fines (I'm talking 10k minimum) and jail-time should be a minimal. On the bright side, repeat offenders can be fined up to $100,000. On the other hand, that up to should be "a minimum of"! Then there's the "exception", pure bullshit. In the case of this bill, the "exception" should be a mitigating factor in the defense. The exception is: "Neither an action to enjoin or restrain a violation, nor an action to recover for loss or damage, may be brought under this section for the accidental disclosure of information if the disclosure was caused by an Act of God, unforeseeable network or systems failure, or other event beyond the control of the Internet service provider, online service provider, or operator of a commercial website." An "act of god"? What religious bullshit is that. Congressment continually illustrate the pin-headed imbeciles they are by wording like this. Accidental disclosure, or network/system failure are in the control of ISP's. You entrust ISP's with your private information -- its their responsibility to make sure its secure. If your information is leaked because they stored it on a Windows machine protected by a character-only 8-letter password, they should be liable. This should be a mitigating factor in punishment, not a defense. The section on "Applications to the Senate" is vague. The section on applications to federal agencies is crap, as it creates exceptions: Federal Agencies should be under strict rules just like everyone else.

In short, this bill is toothless. Its simply an attempt on the part of that fuck Hollings to gain back some good standing with the same consituency he lost face with for supporting the SSSCA and the DMCA. I'll post a more detailed critique of the bill upon further analysis.

However, despite my criticisms, this bill is better thn the current situation: which is, no rules at all. But that doesn't excuse half-measures. Either get all the way on or all the way off. Don't try to straddle the fence. Shit or get off the pot.