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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.

9 of 547 comments (clear)

  1. So... Can they sell past history? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Or is there a date at which point than can begin collecting your soul (I mean data) and selling it?

  2. Ouch... by wbr1 · · Score: 3, Interesting
    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.

    --
    Silence is a state of mime.
    1. Re:Ouch... by Thelasko · · Score: 4, Interesting

      This "one side is as bad as the other" bullshit is what got Trump elected in the first place.

      I would like to take this moment to remind everyone that there is this thing called a primary election. During the primary election, you can vote for who you want to see in the general election. Traditionally, primary elections have low turnout, so your vote will have more influence.

      Even if you don't identify with a political party, vote in the primary. I even suggest voting in the primary of the party you identify with the least. Perhaps that would result in some moderate candidates in the general election.

      --
      One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
  3. This is a good thing by smooth+wombat · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Now ISPs can be regulated just like cable or phone companies because they are no longer pass-through entities. Remember, ISPs keep saying they shouldn't be regulated like those others, but now, since they are controlling what you can and can't access (through deals they cut with Netflix and such), they are no different than cable companies.

    Now that they're collecting data, similar to what cable companies do when they know what you watch, ISPs can now be classified as common carriers.

    Even better, since these folks will now know where you go, they can be held responsible for not reporting child pornography and other criminal acts. Nor can they claim ignorance. After all, they're no longer a pass-through entity. They're watching you.

    --
    We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
  4. Re:Who will care? by pem · · Score: 3, Interesting
    The metadata is absolutely valuable. I wasn't making a comment about how you were safe if you were using https, but rather about how a lot of people come out of the woodwork telling you how terrible it would be if everybody used https.

    The cynic in me says they work for the NSA or ISPs when they do that. (Sure, https can't be cached, requires more CPU, etc. but the technical problems seem more and more like the 640K of RAM issue.)

  5. Re:Who will care? by pem · · Score: 3, Interesting
    You have appeared to completely miss my point. I was responding to the facile reasoning behind "facebook already does this, so who cares if your ISP does it as well."

    Whether Facebook, with 2.8 billion users, should be somehow regulated is a different question than whether the ISP should be able to listen in on my internet traffic.

    They don't (didn't?) let the phone company listen in; why is the ISP different?

  6. Re: Internet Rape by coteriescavenger · · Score: 1, Interesting

    If you think your side of the political coin is any cleaner, you're still part of the system. Trump's not perfect, but at least he rejected both parties. You need to learn to appreciate that, and stop getting herded around like sheep.

  7. Re:Who will care? by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Lets start with Government, unless you're a "frothing at the mouth" Libertarian like me (and from your Post history here, you're not "frothing), you're misunderstanding the use of Hyperbole. Which seems to be all the rage. Hence the over the top REAL LIFE examples or late.

    Seems like every day I hear another liberal talking about how RUSSIA HACKED THE ELECTIONS and another Conservative talking about how TERRORISTS KILLED EVERYONE.

    What nobody seems to be talking about is how Americans are being spied upon by the dark shadow government and being outed when politically expedient. We all should be terrified by that knowledge.

    And once you realize the Government is spying on you, ATT/Verizon spying makes even more sense. Who do you think BigTelCo is spying for?

    Again we've already lost the war, this is just mop up stuff to tie any loose ends that might have slipped through. Nothing to see here ... move along.

    --
    Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
  8. Re:Blank check? by rtb61 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Face it the entire US election system was pretty fucked up. In action, you could not tell the difference between Republicans and Democrats, sure they made different noises and ran different PR campaigns to scam the electors but there was no real difference in their profession, as corporate whores and every is for sale.

    This of course can be challenged in the court, as it breaks the constitution, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.", just to be clear for idiots, no where in that paragraph is that regulatory constraint limited to action by government. No fucking line in there about by the government, it is across the board. So the law infringes as passed by government as it denies the right of a person to be secure in the papers, papers being communications, that is the law and it is not limited to government ie government can not pass that law to allow some individuals to attack the security of other citizens and their communications.

    --
    Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen