Slashdot Mirror
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.
About what VPN i use.
Yet another freedom evaporates thanks to corporate greed and political corruption
Someone should start a kickstarter to buy and release the browsing history of every US Senator who voted for this.
Judging from the vote along party lines it certainly seem that socialists care a lot more then the fascists.
(also not touching the flame bait portion)
What I'm seeing as the standout piece of information here is that this was only a law for a short time. This means it must have been legal to sell your information all along except for this short period of time. Now that someone has put a spotlight on it, I guess this will create jobs... in the web proxy industry. I detest both parties of government. If they aren't trying to oppress the majority with ridiculous laws they are trying to oppress the majority with a lack of sane laws.
I'm pretty sure if you polled voters, even those in red states, they'd mostly be against this. So why did the Senate do this? Because they get campaign funds and free campaign ads from big telecoms.
If this is not plutocracy in action, I don't know what the hell is.
Table-ized A.I.
That is what you get for voting for these politicians. But hey enjoy those tax cuts that you probably didn't get if you are not a millionaire.
To me I can not see how any smart technical person can vote for any Republican. As it stands today the GOP votes:
1. For mega corporations and monopolies from tech companies who are anti opensource
2. Believe climate change doesn't exist and is an invention of these elite socialists
3. Support Trump and his competency as shown on any news site
4. Hate highspeed internet and do not believe in infrastructure improvements
5. Believe more H1B1 visa immigrants are needed
6. Believe the bible should be taught in biology classes (it is in Texas!!)
7. Believe science should not be funded as it is only opinion oriented and not based on facts like you get from Church or Foxnews
8. Want more mega monopolies that limit internet and support throttling
9. Support snooping by corporations
10. Believe in unlimited funding by companies to elected officials to vote against your own self interests
11. Believes in old school coal and oil and does not want alternative sources of energy
Yes this post is going to anger MANY. But it HAS to be said. I lean libertarian myself but I am registering as a democrat as I feel as I.T. and science professionals who go to this site that the Republican Party is the biggest danger we face. Even more dangerous than Microsoft was back in the day.
Anyone with an IQ over 100 who is not a millionaire and works in the I.T. field needs to stop supporting these guys.
http://saveie6.com/
Well, lessee. Under Dem administration, FCC restricts ISP use of consumer info, protects privacy. Three months into a GOP administration, party-line vote takes it away so ISP's can sell you out to anyone willing to pay up. Don't need a math book to figure this one out.
Remember that when the pornpolice break down your door, or sends you a friendly extortion note.
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
What's worse than no data? Poisoned data. A collection of data where you cannot tell which is legit and which is bogus.
What we need is a tool that simply opens a LOT of connections to a LOT of servers worldwide. No need to hide your browsing in VPN. Hide it in noise.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
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?
I mentioned this elsewhere, so I'll mention it here:
From what I've been able to gather, this is about S.J. Res. 34, a resolution disapproving the rule submitted by the FCC in December 2016 about protecting privacy of broadband and telecommunications customers. I've only browsed through the FCC rule, so I don't know the complete details on it just yet, but I would hesitate to jump to conclusions here.
First, I'd like to know better what the rule itself says, because depending on how it's written, there may be acceptable grounds for rejecting it.
Secondly, do know that this rule only came into effect on January 3 of this year. So up until 3 months ago, these supposed protections didn't apply to anyone. So if this resolution does completely pass, that means we roll back to how things were at the end of last year.
I'm going to hold off on losing my mind until I get the chance to read up a bit more on the FCC rule and the details behind it. Sometimes knowing the context of something makes it a lot more understandable.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
the point remains... on this vote the Fascists are certainly against privacy compared to the Socialists.
What happened over the last eight years to stop the NSA and CIA from spying on each and everyone of us? Absolutely nothing. That's (apparently) what you get with Dems in charge.
Correct, and it's not cool. But the GOP hasn't lifted a finger to stop NSA and CIA spying so far on their watch, and I ain't holding my breath that Trump and Co. ever will. Are you?
OTOH, the GOP acted real quick to kill off this little squeak of consumer protection which the Dems managed to keep in place in spite of heavy ISP lobbying.
Besides, the NSA and CIA don't see dollar-signs from selling you out... but ISP's do, and that's the only reason they lobbied the GOP to do it. They will sell your info as many times as they can for whoever's willing to pay. That means a whole lot more people, companies, ad agencies, police departments, polling companies, employment contractors, local governments, anyone willing to pay up (even... the NSA and CIA) can learn what you do from the Internet service that you pay for.
Put this in perspective: to even half-way avoid this you have to dump your ISP, and either stay off the net entirely or only connect using other people's ISP's, like stealing someone's wi-fi or parking outside a McDonald's. Yeah, you can VPN, but your ISP will be aware that you're using a VPN, and they'll be happy to tell that to anyone who's willing to pay.
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...