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GOP Senators' New Bill Would Let ISPs Sell Your Web Browsing Data (arstechnica.com)
Yesterday, Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and 23 Republican co-sponsors introduced a resolution that would overturn new privacy rules for internet service providers. "If the Federal Communications Commission rules are eliminated, ISPs would not have to get consumers' explicit consent before selling or sharing web browsing data and other privacy information with advertisers and other third parties," reports Ars Technica. "The measure would use lawmakers' power under the Congressional Review Act to ensure that the FCC rulemaking 'shall have no force or effect.' The resolution would also prevent the FCC from issuing similar regulations in the future." From the report: Flake's announcement said he's trying to "protect consumers from overreaching Internet regulation." Flake also said that the resolution "empowers consumers to make informed choices on if and how their data can be shared," but he did not explain how it will achieve that. The privacy order had several major components. The requirement to get the opt-in consent of consumers before sharing information covered geo-location data, financial and health information, children's information, Social Security numbers, Web browsing history, app usage history, and the content of communications. This requirement is supposed to take effect on December 4, 2017. The rulemaking had a data security component that required ISPs to take "reasonable" steps to protect customers' information from theft and data breaches. This was supposed to take effect on March 2, but the FCC under newly appointed Chairman Ajit Pai halted the rule's implementation. Another set of requirements related to data breach notifications is scheduled to take effect on June 2. Flake's resolution would prevent all of those requirements from being implemented. He said that this "is the first step toward restoring the [Federal Trade Commission's] light-touch, consumer-friendly approach." Giving the FTC authority over Internet service providers would require further FCC or Congressional action because the FTC is not allowed to regulate common carriers, a designation currently applied to ISPs.
just to put a point on it: nothing, no way, no how, is private after exposure to the internet.
I bet lobbyists will pay top dollar for a Senator's browsing data.
Remember, regardless of party affiliation, when you read a politicians description of a bill, you must invert most of the descriptive language he uses.
...consumer-friendly approach.
Tells us the results will certainly be consumer-hostile.
An internal system operation returned the error "The operation completed successfully.".
Watch the increase of VPN's in the near future.....O wait*turns on OpenVPN*
Flake's announcement said he's trying to "protect consumers from overreaching Internet regulation." Flake also said that the resolution "empowers consumers to make informed choices on if and how their data can be shared," but he did not explain how it will achieve that.
It won't. I love how our representatives think reducing regulations on companies increases our protection and/or freedoms.
I'll be waiting for an ISP will sell the Senator's browsing information and/or his inadequately protected personal to get stolen so he can understand how his "protections from regulations" worked out... I imagine it will show he's into Furry Porn.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Are ISP's common carriers? I mean, sometimes they want to be and act like it, then other times (like this) they just forget the whole thing...
It's like having their cake and eating it too....
Just buy a good, fast VPN and your ISP gets nothing.
All an ISP can then see is that a consumer is enjoying their privacy again.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Why do Americans keep voting for these corrupt bastards?
Contact Senator Flake: https://www.flake.senate.gov/p...
You don't have to be from AZ - put in whatever information you like. Express your discomfort that he's submitted a bill removing consumer protections that let ISPs violate our privacy and sell our medical, health, and financial information to anyone they want without our permission.
Just to chime in on a couple of trends I noticed in the earlier posts. First just because a vast population of hackers out there may be able to view your browser history, does not mean they will. Frankly, you are not interesting to hackers. You are interesting to advertisers, which what the Congressional Bill favors. Second, if there was an FCC privacy rule protecting you, it can not be overridden by a Terms of Service agreement. A TOS is just a contract between you and the ISP. In the hierarchy of law, that is the lowest level. If there is a local, state, federal, or Constitutional provision that protects you, that ends the story right there.
-- Perhaps I see less than some, but more than many.
"Yesterday, Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and 23 Republican co-sponsors introduced a resolution that would overturn new privacy rules for internet service providers."
Seriously question: why are Republican lawmakers so willing to sell out their own constituents? And why do rank and file republican voters go along with it?
They're against anything and everything that would seem to be good for the people of their states and districts- healthcare, privacy protection, consumer protection, environmental protection, financial regulation on banks and mortgage companies, etc etc etc.
I mean, what the fuck?
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
A VPN can end up in some other nation as an exit. Might be a VPN server or some network the VPN will share with a lot of other networks.
If your still seeing ads in 2017, try firefox with a few add ons.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
This guy spends all day every day just visiting this one IP. Weird!
It's times like these that I think Damn, why did the Dems have to run Hillary. This never would have happened if Bernie had been allowed to win the nomination.
We all know porn is big business in this country, and oddly, those who whine the loudest about porn's influence on society are the largest consumers of porn.
As far back as 2009, studies showed people in the Midwest and deep South, heavy bible-belt country, had larger amounts of porn consumption than other parts of the country. A more recent survey showed the same thing but also, in those places where same-sex marriage was outlawed, gay porn consumption was higher than other places, including where same-sex marriage is legal.
This bill will make it very interesting for those folks to explain why they're getting ads for sexual enhancers, condoms, lube and toys.
Make aggressive adblockers the default option in browsers, that reduces the value of the information significantly.
He is up for reelection in 2018. Looks like he will have a competitor on his right (is that possible???) and of course there will be a democrat in the race too. Donating, then write him a note explaining why you are donating!
Small minded, mean spirited assholes who don't care about anyone who can't give them $$$.
Dems aren't any better on the $$$ front, but at least they think about not being evil.
When did the lack of revenue from tracking and selling customer data become an expense? I know it's been a few years since my accounting courses but I'm pretty sure that doesn't adhere to GAAP.
Two of my imaginary friends reproduced once
The ISPs want all the benefits and protections of common carrier status, without having to actually act like a common carrier (i.e., having to do anything that would benefit the customer rather than the ISP).
The current GOP is falling all over themselves trying to give them whatever they want.
This is already Facebook's entire business model. (How did you think they made money?)
Yesterday, Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and 23 Republican co-conspirators...
FTFY
There is no issue that the Reps are better for the "little guy". Dems bad, Reps worse.
Does that sting little false equivalence boy? If so let's see an issue. And, no, Hillary wouldn't have us in a nuclear war by now.
This is not true. Allow me to explain why.
It used to be that the Democrats wanted to solve everything by having the government regulate the everloving sh*t out of it, while the Republicans wanted to encourage/harness open-market capitalist forces to solve everything. It was a pick your poison sort of deal, but, most of the time the two were forced to cooperate and compromise between those two ideas to some degree, and the solution was often at least moderately less bad. Corporations would often be given sweeter deals than they should, but they also rarely if ever completely got their way.
The problem is that today, the Democrats are still trying to solve everything via regulations, but the Republicans have largely switched from trying to find ways to harness market forces to solve problems, to simply declaring that Regulation is Evil, and that allowing corporations to do whatever the f*ck they want will solve everything. Whether that is because they actually drank their own koolaid and really believe it, or they simply believe that what matters is all that money from their donors, tends to depend on the individual politician, but the result is still the same.
Put another way, the Democrats might waffle on how much lead the corporations could put in your water, and they might err and allow too much through, but the current Republicans proudly don't give a sh*t if the corporations are actively dumping toxic radioactive sludge in the water.
The privacy in your own home compared to the privacy of your own yard isn't the same comparison as not connected to the internet vs traffic routed over the internet. I'm not sure what the best comparisons/descriptions are, but it just isn't the same.
I'm sure furry porn is way too pedestrian for our esteemed government people.
This guy Flake is not a flake, he's a dick.
It should really be explained to legislators that internet data and telephone calls are virtually the same thing now. If your ISP can sell all of your data, so can whoever you are using for your telephone calls.
Maybe if it were explained in those terms, there would be more support for network neutrality.
Okay so this rule means they're going to have to get your consent. Will they put it on page 55 of the end-user license agreement you aren't reading and just agreeing to anyway when you sign up?
This solves nothing. The problem is a lack of competition.
The Democrats are just as bad as the Republicans.
Based on everything I've seen, I'd have to disagree. Neither Democrats or Republicans walk on water, but Republicans seem intent on rolling back a lot of stuff that favors the people as opposed to corporations. For example, the bill mentioned in this very article.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
After what is revealed on his internet history though? "Shemale bestiality"? "Loli hentai"? "Gay orgies in your area!"? C'mon, I'm sure there's much more!
1. They're bought and paid for.
2. They're largely single issue voters. Either they're the ones doing the buying from #1 and just want low taxes, low wages (for their employees) and no regulations or they're "values voters" who vote on religion, abortion or gun control.
The left is a much, much loser coalition so they tend to lose. Every few years everything goes to shit and the left gets in charge, fixes a few things, and as soon as things get a little better the right take over with their superior organization and money. Basically, evil will always win because good is dumb.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
If you think that your browsing data is private right now, you're just kidding yourself; privacy regulations are meaningless.
The way to make communications private is through technology, not regulations.
Huh. I thought it was tagged Republicans because TFA is about a bill sponsored by Republicans.
Must just be a coincidence I guess.
Only crack the nuts that crack. You don't put the ones that don't crack in the sack.
> The Democrats are just as bad as the Republicans.
So, do tell, where did the regulations that this bill prevents taking effect come from?
Anyone willing to explain what this means and how exactly this browsing data is stored and shared?
Yes, I'm posting AC. I have no desire to be unemployed.
We deal with a lot of data, ranging from your web activity, financial records, public records, shopping history, demographic information and much more. Any of your data that you think is not already being sold is naive. Regulations are relatively easy to accommodate and still use and sell your data. If a regulation, for example, prohibits selling your PII(Personally Identifiable Information) along with other data such as demographics or online activities, there are ways to get around that. The data can be obtained in a Non-PII way and matched back to you after the fact using any number of algorithms. If we know 107 things about you, and we get data that lists your ZIP+4 and a dozen data attributes, but nothing "personally identifiable" do you think it's hard for us to link the new data back to you? We have some pretty clever people working in this industry and matching on a massive scale is our core technology.
Every time someone says "your data will not be sold",there's a loophole in there and companies looking to use the loopholes to sell your data to make extra revenue. Whenever I'm in the checkout line and they ask for emails or other information, and I say no, the response is always a contrite "Oh, we don't sell your data to anyone" I reply "Sure you do, my company buys it".
Do you have a membership card or keyfob that gets you 5% off on purchases at a store? The discount is made back by selling us data on everything you buy. Nothing is free.
All this proposed regulation would change is the number of loopholes needed to use this particular data, not actual usage of the data. It's not that your data will now suddenly be available for sale, it'll just have a higher profit margin.
Do they not realize this affects them too? I take it that the Muslim witch hunt isn't going so well so everyone must suffer. No WMD? More troops. No Muslims to harass? Go after everyone. How is this party still around? Surely their old tobacco and cotton money would of run out by now...Or, maybe they know since they hold the majority, they'll use this to wipe out Democrats and anyone else they don't like. Everyone has something that can be used as black mail.
Sadly that's often how things work, money talks. I like the system Arizona used to have where if one candidate took in private campaign contributions the state would match contributions to the other candidate if they publicly financed their campaign. Sadly this was struck down by the conservative branch of the supreme court who like to think that money == speech.
This post is encrypted twice with ROT-13. Documenting or attempting to crack this encryption is illegal.
The Democrats are just as bad as the Republicans.
Based on everything I've seen, I'd have to disagree. Neither Democrats or Republicans walk on water, but Republicans seem intent on rolling back a lot of stuff that favors the people as opposed to corporations. For example, the bill mentioned in this very article.
You're probably swayed by mainstream media bias. They're quick to point out bad conservative actions, and tend to sweep liberal problems under the rug.
For example, Trump withdrew the US from TPP. Slashdot has had several articles about the TPP, everyone was moaning about how bad it was, it was created and promoted by Obama's administration...
For another example, Obama ordered the drone-killing of a US citizen, and then drone-killed the son some weeks later. Outside the theatre of war, with no trial, and in a cafe killing 8 others as collateral damage.
Obama then classified the legal justification for why he had the power to do that, so that no one could question it.
That's the sort of thing we don't hear from the mainstream media, it's called the liberal bias and it's well known.
That's why you probably think Democrats are better.
They're still running under the "lesser of 2 evils" model.
> The Democrats are just as bad as the Republicans.
So, do tell, where did the regulations that this bill prevents taking effect come from?
Bipartisan support, of course.
Did you think all the bad stuff from the last 8 years came from one-sided control of government?
Or the 8 years prior to that?
Nope, you lost all credibility when you started shilling for Trump.
I think the word you're looking for is "advocating".
I'm under the impression that a shill is paid by the house. I advocate for free.
Life isn't so easy when you don't find people willing to lie about your naked shame.
Um... OK. I'll have to take your word on that.
Do you think banks favor Dodd-Frank or oppose it? The big banks like it, because it helps keep down their potential competitors. Democrats passed that one.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Don't do anything on the internet you wouldn't do on the stage at the NFL halftime show ?
Though, by that analogy, there are a LOT of Janet Jacksons out there.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Because most of them labor under the impression that the free market solve everything better than government. Under that theory if you have two isp, one selling your browsing habit the other not, if the free market (consumer) decide they want to protect their privacy, then they will flock to the one not selling and the other one will have to adapt or die.
Naturally the clever reader will immediately see the flaws in that. There are captured market which are not free (like isp) therefore it is illusory to think the free market will be better at handling such situation, practically this means once they (any politician) relax the law, it will be used by ISP and you will have no recourse (either you go offline, or you accept the violation of privacy, most folk in the US don't have a choice of ISP).
Rinse and repeat with other free-market-is-better mantra. Like healthcare where it is very obvious the free market system cannot work (every actor except consumer wanting their slice of the pie, captured market as you often not have choice, additional intermediate useless actor like insurer, impossible to negotiate in bulk like a government of reasonable size can etc...).
personally I think the politician are well aware that it will only profit firms and the folk which lobbied them for it (you don't think the idea comes out of good heart or from study of the current situation, right ?). But they do NOT care. They are in for the power and money, not really out of good heart. Yes I am cynic, comes with age and length of observing such behavior (it is not a specialty of the US, it is just more obvious with the GOP).
Unfortunately there is a sizeable amount of folk in the US which still believe in such crap tale, and still vote GOP, (possibly because they can't stand the opposite side, or they can't stand those uppity colored folk or can't stand women having a right to decide to abort etc...). Then there is gerrymandering , while it is used by both side, is far more used by GOP to protect entrenched politician. Finally there is the historical stupidity of the EC and winner-take-all...
So expect more and more of such nice laws as long as senate/president/congress are mostly republican.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
So would you rather have "it's harder to start a new small bank" or "everybody I know ALSO had their houses reposessed because the banks took stupid betts, and committed flagrant fraud" ?
Because guess what - THAT Is what happened when there was NOT a dodd-frank.
Meantime the reps are trying extremely hard to get rid of ANYTHING that may reduce fraud and corruption in the wankster industry - they are currently trying to come up with a way to destroy the independence of the CFPB. Because protecting consumers from fraud hurts their good friends at Goldman Sachs who get rich from defrauding consumers.
Merryl-Lynch stole millions from people who weren't even their customers - remember ? That story breaking was only 4 months ago !
But you would rather have shit like that happen - without any recourse for consumers ?
Nobody cares how many banks there are - competition has never made a businessman more honest (indeed it tends to have the opposite effect) - what matters is how trustworthy they are. 5 Banks you can trust is better than 5000 banks you can't. And the ONLY thing that could POSSIBLY make a wankster trustworthy is the fear of going to jail if he isn't.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
I know a lot of people are pretty adamant about having their browsing open for all to see, but some of us really don't care, myself included. I understand the implications, but people also need to understand what's been said for a long time.. "If it's on the internet, assume anyone can see it." That said, I'd be OK with something like this, if only the consumer could somehow profit, either directly or indirectly (through reduced costs for example), from these sales. Unfortunately it's just a way for big corp to get bigger.
I tend to rant.
The Democrats are just as bad as the Republicans.
That is a false equivalence of epic proportions. The Democrats have done (and will continue to do) bad things, but they are not in the same league as the Republicans.
Just take this bill here. Everyone knows exactly what it will lead to, everyone knows what industry lobby sent the bribes. It is not a "grey area" trading something for something. It is a black and white bribejob serving corporate interests and severely hurting private consumers. This is a textbook case of corruption, just like you would expect in Russia or Ukraine.
People who spend all their time on facebook are already having all their activity sold to the highest bidder. What would their complaint be when their ISP asks for a cut on the action?
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
...Flake's announcement said he's trying to "protect consumers from overreaching Internet regulation."...
But who is going to protect consumers from the ISPs' lobbyist-purchased legislation that our Republican congress passes?
Yes because we all have a plethora of quality ISPs to choose from.
Because most of them labor under the impression that the free market solve everything better than government.
I hear what you're saying, but there's never been a free market, and the so-called free market is usually much, much worse at solving problems than the government is. The profit motive is usually detrimental when applied to human beings.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
"everybody I know ALSO had their houses reposessed because the banks took stupid betts, and committed flagrant fraud" ?
Here's the problem with your argument, and why you got completely fooled, and why you should be less emotional about this topic in general: Dodd Frank does absolutely nothing to prevent that.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Oh well I'm sure you're opinion is much more valuable than the overwhelming number of experts who support the law because it was created to prevent EXACTLY THAT.
It doesn't exist in a vaccuum of course, things like the CFPB are part of the system - but that was what Dodd-Frank was created to do. To prevent the kind of massive fraud that in 2008 allowed the banks to defraud BOTH the people who bought their 'investment repackaged homeloans' and the home-owners.
Let me give you a little hint of just how corrupt it all was: practically NONE of the evictions in 2009 were legal. It's basic principle: if a bank sells your homeloan to a third-party investor they CANNOT evict you or reposess your house. They lost the right to do so. They are no longer a party to the loan, so they have no standing to bring eviction notices.
And since the entire REASON for the crash was them reselling home loans (as more secure than they really were) - they had no right to evict anybody. Yet they got away with it. That means every single one of those eviction notices were served with fraudulent papers.
Never trust a banker further than you regulate his ass.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Let me give you a little hint of just how corrupt it all was: practically NONE of the evictions in 2009 were legal.
Uh......the evictions were for people who weren't making payments. If you're not making payments, you're eventually going to get evicted, and that's not ever going to change.
Never trust a banker further than you regulate his ass.
And go one farther: don't trust the banker even after regulation. You can't buy loopholes, the banker can and did.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Ding ding ding!
I think it's fixable though. I'm working on it.
Those who advocate genocide deserve every protection afforded by law, and none afforded by common human decency.
>Uh......the evictions were for people who weren't making payments. If you're not making payments, you're eventually going to get evicted, and that's not ever going to change.
Sure...sure... but you can ONLY be evicted by somebody who has a legal contract with you. You don't OWE payments to somebody who doesn't. If they sell your bond on to a third party without your consent - then they lose the right to collect payments (since they no longer have a contract with you) but the new party does NOT gain that right - since you didn't AGREE to a contract with them.
Legally - if you securitize a loan without the consent of the borrower - you just gave them the house as a gift since there is nobody left to whom they owe money.
Had the banks been interested in acting legally - then each onsold security would require a new contract with each home-owner, in which the new holder of the bond acquired the right to collect (and evict). They could then hire the bank to act as a collection agent again - but all this is ONLY legally possible AFTER you signed a NEW contract consenting to the securitization. This is not a uniquely American problem. South Africa has the same issue but South Africa largely skipped the great recession with almost no local economic damage - we suffered because our trade partners were suddenly poorer but we had no mass reposessions or increases in unemployment - exactly because our banking system is sufficiently regulated to rule out most of the crap that happened in the USA.
But in the subsequent years securitization became a big thing here. And there are interesting things to note: in SA it's actually illegal to securitize a bond without the consent of the borrower. The number of borrowers who have ever been contacted by a bank to request they sign a contract with a securitizer = 0. But the banks OWN investment publications state that over 85% of bonds are securitized (investors in banks love securitization because it means the banks aren't carrying much risk). SA law is very clear that if a loan is securitized the bank has NO right to evict or reposess - they no longer have a contract with you. The people they sold the loan to could, they have standing, but they never do (they love the shadows too much). Judges have had a tendency to rubber stamp repo-cases for the banks, but people who do fight back almost always win - because invariably the banks are unable to produce an original contract or proof that the loan has not been securitized (and any judge worth his salt says "if 85% of loans are known to be securitized then the burden of proof is on the bank to show that this is one of the other 15"). ABSA (the largest bank in the country) has been claiming "document was destroyed in a fire" in practically every case for years now - even cases where the loan was taken out AFTER the fire that supposedly destroyed the contracts !
So - same problems, much, much smaller scale - because SA banks are seriously regulated (and I would argue are STILL under-regulated).
More-over saying "people who didn't pay" is a grossly misleading thing - all those people DID pay - then suddenly their payments jumped (sometimes by 600% or more) in a month or two. A legal system that allows banks to randomly change interest rates with no oversight or control is nothing but legalized theft.
Any bank that wants your house merely needs to to ramp up the interest till you can no longer pay for it and boom - you're homeless. They could take a house from fucking Bill Gates if they wanted to since there's no control over how high they can raise interest rates.
Now normally, this doesn't happen THAT often - simply because the PR is bad - but even that "not too often" is still way too high. In fact the FBI used to have a white-collar crime division that investigated things like home loan fraud (G.W. Bush got rid of it) - agents who used to work in that division have stated that more than 80% of all home loan fraud is committed by the bank.
In sane legal systems - there are laws limiting by how much a
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
More-over saying "people who didn't pay" is a grossly misleading thing - all those people DID pay - then suddenly their payments jumped (sometimes by 600% or more) in a month or two.
Where are you getting this? I tried searching for people whose payments jumped 600% but couldn't find anything about it. Adjustable Rate Mortgages are usually indexed to something: banks can't just randomly choose an interest rate.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
>That's an interesting legal theory, but I'm not sure there's anything to back it up.
You mean besides both Dutch and English common-law ? Which states clearly that you cannot transfer a contract without the consent of all parties to that contract. Or the standard rules on standing in court - which says you cannot sue somebody over a contract you are not a party to ? And of course, you cannot possibly be a party to a contract AFTER transferring your share in it to another party.
And it's worth noting that several American legislators agreed with me - and actively urged people to refuse to vacate their homes on the basis that the evictions were likely fraudulent.
Oh and the fact that, in most cases, if people challenged the evictions in court the banks tended to lose - and very soon, they were more likely to drop the eviction proceedings than to try and pursue the case, which strongly suggests they knew they couldn't win.
And that this is an international pattern: home-owners who CHALLENGE repo and eviction proceedings usually win, if they fight hard enough to get past the magistrate judges who tend to rubber-stamp anything a bank brings them because they assume a big bank concerned about PR wouldn't lie in court.
> Adjustable Rate Mortgages are usually indexed to something: banks can't just randomly choose an interest rate.
Indeed they cannot - anymore. Thanks to laws like Dodd-Frank which outlawed that.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
You have no citations to anything you've said.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
You lived through it ! You need citations for things that happened before your very eyes ?
This was daily news reports in every major newspaper for well over a year. Its the entire first 45minutes of 'capitalism: a love story'.
And somehow you lived through 2008/9 so out of touch with your fellow citizens that you managed not to see this happening all around you ? Or perhaps your libertarian ideological leanings is to blame. There is no more perfect blindness than the cognitive dissonance of libertarians.
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