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Activist Starts a Campaign To Buy and Publish Browsing Histories of Politicians Who Passed Anti-Privacy Law (searchinternethistory.com)
On Tuesday, Congress sent proposed legislation to President Trump that wipes away landmark online privacy protections. In a party-line vote, House Republicans freed Internet service providers such as AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast of protections approved just last year that had sought to limit what companies could do with information such as customer browsing habits, app usage history, location data and Social Security numbers. Now call it a poetic justice, online privacy activist Adam McElhaney has launched an initiative called Search Internet History, with an objective of raising funds to buy browsing history of each politician and official who voted in favor of S.J.Res 34. On the site, he has also put up a poll asking people whose internet history they would like to see first.
Update: The campaign, which was seeking $10,000, has already raised over $55,000.
Update: The campaign, which was seeking $10,000, has already raised over $55,000.
Every politician, all the time, with the results updated in real time. This is the only way the rest of us will ever see our privacy respected.
It should be clear by now that fake facts are just as good as real facts, maybe better if they support xenophobic nationalism.
God damn politicians need a taste of their own medicine.
Many ultra-conservative, bible preaching Congress members found to frequently visit porn sites most likely LGBT ones.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
Is about to find out just how limiting the ability to get information is even if they pay for it. Even in industries where there's no data protection laws why would an ISP sell this?
A baker sells a variety of bread to suit tastes, they don't sell you a specific bread made from your own recipe, and they don't sell you their recipes or equipment either.
Back when the UK passed the Snoopers Charter (the one that lets everyone and their dog access your full internet history), those clever politicians made just one important exemption - they themselves wouldn't be subject to the law.
http://www.independent.co.uk/l...
I'd be surprised if the US hasn't done the same thing, but then the UK *is* a world leader in surveillance of their own citizens.
Just because a company CAN sell something does not mean they will.
I think it will be pretty interesting to see what they can actually end up buying.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That's what they say, but it's misguided..you can block data from Google or Facebook. You can't from your ISP.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
This is a cute idea, but I don't think much will come of it. ISPs won't be selling individual browsing histories- despite whatever changes to the laws happen, the liability would be staggering and most buyers would be looking for data in a bulk, automated way that scales. As an advertiser, one individual's complete browsing history is completely useless to me; there's no market for that data that ISN'T to publicly shame people or otherwise spy on people. While I suppose private investigators and law enforcement might be a niche market for this sort of thing, I just don't it happening in a significant way.
What you'd actually be buying are audience segments against IP addresses and possibly device IDs, which could then in turn be matched up to other data sets. Ie, if I'm Coscto, I might be trying to identify "Devices that have recently shopped at Walmart.com". Once I have that, I might be able to match some percentage (maybe 10-40%) of those devices to some other kind of data set (for example, to add demographic data). That's just two data points- not nearly enough to identify anyone- and I've already likely narrowed my starting set of devices down to 10-20% of what the ISP provided me.
It IS possible to ultimately drill down into this kind of data far enough that you can be pretty sure you've found the history for an individual person- in theory anyway. But the amount of time/effort/luck involved to get there makes this impractical to do at scale (i.e., for all the Congress-critters) or to keep up to date manually as cookies expire/are deleted, IP addresses change, people upgrade their phones every 1-2 years... it takes full time teams of people to do this at a very basic level.
Plus there's the whole "That wasn't me, damn neighbors stealing my wifi" defense for anything nefarious.
Source: I work in programmatic audience targeting for a Fortune 100. (I promise we're not evil, we just want to sell you stuff you might actually want)
You can easily protect data with encryption. It's harder to protect meta data. For example: with proper encryption we may never know what Devin Nunes was actually watching on pornhub. To actually hide that Devin Nunes was on pornhub requires something like TOR or a VPN.
I choose whether or not I give Google certain information. Google may be able to deduce personal details about my life. But my ISP should not be able to. I should be able to safely hide behind a screen name without my ISP guessing things about my life.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
You can't from your ISP.
VPN. Conversely, that'd also protect you reasonably from Google.
But then the VPN admins have access to all your browsing..
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
> I'm still waiting on someone to tell my why I should care about someone purchasing my browsing history.
Yes, you're so very open with everyone that you post as Anonymous Coward instead of even a pseudonym. Your super openness doesn't merely not track back to your real name, it doesn't even track back to a fake name.
AC claiming privacy doesn't matter. Sheesh.
Yup, VPNs limit the ability of the ISP to know where you are going... instead you instead give implicit permission to the VPN provider to know where you go.
How does that improve things any?
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
Please make sure to purchase , but not publicize their children's information also. .... How this is legal is beyond me....
How this is legal is one question.
How anyone thought it was a good idea is another. I can't see how ANYONE thought it would be a good idea to allow cable companies to sell this information. Anyone who voted in favor of this is scum of the earth.
I'm am absolutely not a Democrat- but I will paint this vote the only way I can possibly see it being painted. This was a purely partisan issue. This was cutting the nose off to spite the face. This measure was brought in by a Democrat president so it was removed purely to be contrary and partisan.
There is NO logical explanation for this vote- I applaud the Republicans who didn't vote for this for thinking with their heads and not just following the party politics. That shows integrity: Voting against your party for something that is obviously wrong but is a show of party strength, picking the right choice rather than the party choice.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
215 Republicans voted yes. 0 Democrats voted yes. I'm sorry, but this is absolutely a party line vote, regardless of the 15 exceptions out of 230. Yes, it's nice some Republicans apparently have the ability to think, but it's too little. Much too little.
WTF do you think people are going to do with your browsing history??
The potential for predatory marketing practices and discrimination is huge. Your search for "funerals" and then "airfares", and presto! airline tickets just got more expensive for you, and you alone. You visit an Alcoholics Anonymous site and then GEICO and presto! car insurance rates just went up for you, and you alone. You visit the DNC website and then presto! your favorite news site can tailor the news it delivers to you to maximize manipulation. The possibilities are horrifying and endless.