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US Congress Votes To Shred ISP Privacy Rules (theregister.co.uk)
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.
Is there anything they won't rape for money?
...and is the interests of nobody but a few of the obscenely wealthy. The Republican party no longer even pretends to give a shit about the poor and middle class, and yet we keep giving them power. It has to end.
If your records are for sale to anybody, no warrants will be required for any government agency to purchase them.
For all their empty talk of "freedom", the Republican party sure seems to love authoritarian rule.
Um, yes, since this was a regulation that the Democrats passed when they were in power just a few months ago that the Republicans are now repealing, it's pretty hard to claim this is a non-partisan issue. The Democrats didn't have to pass the rule in the first place (and don't claim it was a trap to make the Republicans look bad: the Democrats were overconfident of their victory and the rule was passed before the election).
You can throw up speedbumps to what they can see, and limit the sharing quite a bit. But you can't do that with your ISP, and in a lot of places you have very little choice.
Yeah, actually, I do. Because they tried price discrimination once, and it blew up on them badly. Because people share information as well. Now, if you have evidence they are managing to do this more subtly now, I'd certainly be interested in seeing it.
I see this all-or-nothing bullshit all the time. Is this some sort of trollish astroturf campaign? It certainly doesn't mirror real life.
Only Republicans would rape the Internet. And they got a orangutan in office to rubber stamp it.
Yes the Republicans have been pushing for this since SOPA, and it was protested about and struck down so they tried renaming it CISPA and that got struck down and now they are pulling this crap. It is not so much about the president but the fact we have Republicans in the house and senate who think they have a blank check to do whatever they want.. I expect they are going to try to make abortion illegal and pull all planned parenthood funding, I imagine they are going to pull all support for climate change research and put as much money into coal and oil drilling and digging and I know for a fact they are going to try to get us embroiled in more wars so that if there is a Democratic resurgence they will be dealing with the fall out from that war so hard that they will not be able to accomplish anything in the 4 or 8 years they have, thereby leaving an open for another republican to get in on the idea that the Democrat guy got nothing done. Same old Republican crap , different day! I have said it before, This is what you get when you vote Republicans into office. Get used to it kids! I learned this a long long time ago.
I assume you're referring to all the anti-terrorism Snowden shit, that started under W. but continued under Obama (and six years of GOP-controlled Congress). And damn-well ain't gonna let up any under Trump.
But let's put it in context. The GOP, after years of screaming and gnashing of teeth, when the chips were finally down could NOT get enough of their own shit together to repeal Obamacare, that thing they say they hate more than anything in the whole world. But, just a few days later, these same guys managed to put their differences aside to crush a tiny consumer-protection rule for Internet users.
That's who we're dealing with here, people. Still insist that Dems are the worst? Ancient history, get over it. Out of the frying pan, into the fire, and shit it's only been 12 weeks!
but on the other hand, doesn't Ivanka's clothing line just look spanky!
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...