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Senate Votes To Kill FCC's Broadband Privacy Rules (pcworld.com)
The Senate voted 50-48 along party lines Thursday to repeal an Obama-era law that requires internet service providers to obtain permission before tracking what customers look at online and selling that information to other companies. PCWorld adds: The Senate's 50-48 vote Thursday on a resolution of disapproval would roll back Federal Communications Commission rules requiring broadband providers to receive opt-in customer permission to share sensitive personal information, including web-browsing history, geolocation, and financial details with third parties. The FCC approved the regulations just five months ago. Thursday's vote was largely along party lines, with Republicans voting to kill the FCC's privacy rules and Democrats voting to keep them. The Senate's resolution, which now heads to the House of Representatives for consideration, would allow broadband providers to collect and sell a "gold mine of data" about customers, said Senator Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat. Kate Tummarello, writing for EFF: [This] would be a crushing loss for online privacy. ISPs act as gatekeepers to the Internet, giving them incredible access to records of what you do online. They shouldn't be able to profit off of the information about what you search for, read about, purchase, and more without your consent. We can still kill this in the House: call your lawmakers today and tell them to protect your privacy from your ISP.
For the kneejerks, I humbly offer the original document this Senate resolution references:
https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/...
I wonder if the Senate overturned this regulation because they hate privacy or because of the fact these are "legislature level" rules being enacted by unelected bureaucrats in the last days of an administration that did everything it could to control its citizenry without the approval of Congress.
And this is to say nothing of the fact that Google and their ilk shouldn't be allowed to indulge in their raging data collection fetishes without letting the big telcoms and isp's wet their beaks. Right?
1. It was an FCC rule, not a law passed by Congress. Resolution didn't repeal it. One section was struck because it didn't do anything to actually protect user privacy because of exemptions in rule, it didn't address privacy issues of services like Facebook, Google, Amazon.com, and because it likely violated 1st amendment protection of commercial speech by singling out ISPs while not addressing other communications service providers.
2. It was approved by the FCC 2-1 vote in late October 2016. It was a last minute decision that
3. It was scheduled to go into effect March 2 2017, but had been stayed after the election. The privacy rule has never been in effect.
4. It was an attempted power grab of the FCC over that of the FTC which, up until a ninth court of appeals decision in 2016, had regulatory jurisdiction over broadband data providers. Expect more regulatory reform to reverse the 9th court's ruling and to make it a requirement that any major change to a regulatory agency jurisdiction will need congressional approval first.