Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

US Congress Votes To Shred ISP Privacy Rules (theregister.co.uk)

Posted by BeauHD on from the rules-smooles dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: The U.S. House of Representatives has just approved a "congressional disapproval" vote of privacy rules, which gives your ISP the right to sell your internet history to the highest bidder. The measure passed by 232 votes to 184 along party lines, with one Democrat voting in favor and 14 not voting. This follows the same vote in the Senate last week. Just prior to the vote, a White House spokesman said the president supported the bill, meaning that the decision will soon become law. This approval means that whoever you pay to provide you with internet access -- Comcast, AT&T, Time Warner Cable, etc -- will be able to sell everything they know about your use of the internet to third parties without requiring your approval and without even informing you. That information can be used to build a very detailed picture of who you are: what your political and sexual leanings are; whether you have kids; when you are at home; whether you have any medical conditions; and so on -- a thousand different data points that, if they have sufficient value to companies willing to pay for them, will soon be traded without your knowledge. With over 100 million households online in the United States, that means Congress has just given Big Cable an annual payday of between $35 billion and $70 billion.

2 of 547 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Ouch... by fiannaFailMan · · Score: 5, Informative

    Was there lube? I didn't feel any lube.

    This idea that all senators and reps are terrible - except mine has got to go. We are all continually being bent over. Vote all of them out.

    Ugh. Vote the Republicans out, dum dum! Can you not see that the Democrats voted against this abomination? This "one side is as bad as the other" bullshit is what got Trump elected in the first place.

    --
    Drill baby drill - on Mars
  2. Re:Nothing new here by Headw1nd · · Score: 5, Informative
    No, this is incorrect. The key feature is that the ISPs used to be under FTC jurisdiction, who has rules in place covering user data. When the ISPs were declared common carriers, oversight of them was moved from the FTC to the FCC. Now the FTC has no jurisdiction over the ISPs, only the FCC does - and the FCC has essentially been banned from regulating them where user data is concerned.

    Common carrier rules could be abolished, and regulation of ISPs could be moved back to the FTC, but that would take time and have other negative consequences.