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GOP Congressman Defending Privacy Vote: 'Nobody's Got To Use The Internet' (washingtonpost.com)
Wisconsin congressman F. James Sensenbrenner Jr. defended his decision to help repeal broadband privacy rules by telling a constituent, "Nobody's got to use the Internet." An anonymous reader quotes the 73-year-old congressman:
"And the thing is that if you start regulating the Internet like a utility, if we did that right at the beginning, we would have no Internet... Internet companies have invested an awful lot of money in having almost universal service now. The fact is is that, you know, I don't think it's my job to tell you that you cannot get advertising for your information being sold. My job, I think, is to tell you that you have the opportunity to do it, and then you take it upon yourself to make that choice... That's what the law has been, and I think we ought to have more choices rather than fewer choices with the government controlling our everyday lives."
"The congressman then moved on to the next question," reports The Washington Post, but criticism of his remarks appeared on social media. One activist complained that the congressman's position was don't use the internet if you don't want your information sold to advertisers -- drawing a clarification from the congressman's office.
"Actually he said that nobody has to use the Internet. They have a choice. Big difference."
"The congressman then moved on to the next question," reports The Washington Post, but criticism of his remarks appeared on social media. One activist complained that the congressman's position was don't use the internet if you don't want your information sold to advertisers -- drawing a clarification from the congressman's office.
"Actually he said that nobody has to use the Internet. They have a choice. Big difference."
In the USA, if you wish to actually be a part of modern society, yes you really do have to use the Internet.
Just like not having a phone number became a liability many years ago, not being online cuts you off from modern life.
This guy is living in the past...
If you want to keep unprincipled actors in the datamining sphere from getting (too much) information about you, you *can* avoid patronizing internet services that are run by them. That means you don't get to enjoy 95% of the internet, because every-fucking-thing is run/owned/exploited/controlled by Google, Facebook, Akamai, Cloudflare...
I'm unusually careful with what I do on the internet compared to most people I know, and every year I feel more and more socially handicapped. As in:
"Oh, you don't do Facebook? I'll send you the invite by email then".
"What do you mean you didn't find it? It's the first line in Google search... What the fuck is Duckduckgo?".
"You should have used Waze instead of that offline satnav: it shows traffic jams and speed cameras live! What do you mean it's evil?"
Etc etc etc...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Let's see him win his next reelection without using the Internet. Is that possible? Of course not. As long as old white men like him keep getting elected into office, things will never get better.
09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
How can you not use the internet let's see to not use the internet would require:
1. Drawing money for a month before the experiment start as most banks use internet technology to contact their branches. (Yes might be secured but still TCP/IP)
2. You cannot buy from certain stores because they use internet technology to update store details and order new stock.
3. You cannot even send a letter or receive a letter because I can promise you the systems that sort your mail are connected to the internet in some way. (Uses network technology)
4. In some buildings you will not be able to use elevators so walk up the stairs as they monitor the lifts via internet connections.
5. You cannot watch TV because the TV stations use internet connections to build their news and even news papers become problematic.
6. You cannot use a phone because even landline phones these day at some stage pass through internet connected devices.
7. Oops cannot use electricity from electricity grid, even the solar panel controler is that you use at your home might be connected to the internet.
So yes it is absolutely possible to not use the internet. But you will have to live somewhere in a forest somewhere.
if you don't want your personal info as a public servant to be available to anyone 24/7 don't be a public servant.
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
Nah, there's are legions of Republicans and a few Democrats that will still get voted in because their constituents are just as backward as they are. Texas is a prime example. Science? They've heard of it but figure is it a colossal dodge by liberals to prevent them from having dominion over the earth and giving it a good fucking.
Are you trying to give this moron a heart attack? He's gotten to 73 years old being an ignorant git by not paying attention to things that will disrupt his view of the world. His constituents think he's just potty.
Our society requires rapid, successful transportation and communication. We have almost completely transitioned to a Just In Time (JIT) economy. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Thanks to JIT optimization, there are no large stores of immediately useful resources and goods in the US. All elements of our society depend on tight, reliable links between supply and demand. The stores only have a few days supplies. The stores rely on timely orders and deliveries to maintain stock and reduce overhead. The suppliers of stores only have a few days of supplies. They rely on receiving accurate and timely orders to know where to deliver. Those suppliers then must place timely and accurate orders to keep the next link in the chain moving. This continues all the way to the harvesting and transportation of raw materials. Every step is optimized to reduce overhead and unnecessary stock. Any supplier that fails to optimize is replaced by a more efficient supplier that has optimized. Every step is dependent on quick, accurate communication and transport. When this breaks down, people die.
For example, most of the deaths during the Hurricane Katrina debacle were not caused by the initial flooding. They were caused by the breakdown in transportation and communication.
ALL aspects of the US transportation and communication grids are dependent on the continued functionality of the internet. The phone systems are now interlinked with the internet. The management of the highways and the supermarkets all depend on the internet. The internet supports all orders and deliveries in the US. Without the internet, there is no food in the stores or gas in the gas stations. If the internet goes, the electrical grid quickly follows.
If the internet suffers an extended outage, there would be massive numbers of deaths. During the first few days, there would be thousands of deaths. During the first few weeks there would be millions of deaths. During the first few months, there would be billions of deaths.
On the other hand, the internet is built and maintained by hordes of capable people. We can overcome almost any obstacle. Once the dying starts, we will come up with answers. They will not be pretty, but they should be functional. Hopefully, one of the first acts will be the elimination of anybody who claims that the internet is unnecessary.
at 73 he probably equates the internet thing with the telegraph.
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
"I love it how Republicans want smaller government just big enough to fit in our bedrooms." - West Wing
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
why anyone still votes for the GOP? Religion? Are the Tax Cuts worth it? And no, the other side isn't as bad. This last disaster passed along party lines.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Exactly. How many GOVERNMENT sites are the single point of access for those services?
Hell, my job itself REQUIRES internet connectivity.
If I can't support my place of business' IP phone and am unable to remote into the systems of our company or our clients I DO NOT HAVE A JOB and have to try to go work at McDonalds...
This guy is living in the fucking 60's. In a home for the developmentally disabled. On life support. In a vegetative state.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Internet companies have invested an awful lot of money in having almost universal service now.
Yes, those billions of taxpayer dollars given to them during the Clinton administration, and the billions more in tax breaks and what amounts to effective monopolies, is a lot of money being spent by the end users. It's so much money, ISPs have to be reminded they can't spend taxpayer money on booze and trips to Disney World.
As we saw recently, the taxpayers keep being told they have to hand over their money to these private companies for. . . well, no one's really sure since neither service or accessibility has been increased in many places.
To say companies built the INTERNET is stupid. It goes back to military and academia and carried forth largely by disinterested idealists who made things like GNU, liberated BSD, cypherpunks, netscape, even people creating languages like perl and php. I know this guy is just ignorant, but it is infuriating mostly since youth aren't even aware of these things.
What makes you think Google, Facebook etc are so keen to sell your data while AT&T etc would never consider it, despite them knowing everything from your home address and daily movements to your TV watching habits and full browsing history?
Just like Google & Facebook, the major ISPs don't sell your data but do use it to run targeted ad networks of their own, taking full advantage of their far more extensive knowledge of you - and they're much harder to avoid. Examples of abuse abound, like Verizon being fined for their zombie supercookies, or AT&T charging an extra $29/month if you don't care to be targeted.
You can easily avoid Google or Facebook, but how do you avoid your only local broadband provider, or the telco you bought your phone from? It seems the GOP's answer is to avoid the internet completely.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
Yeah fuck white people! Lets put some burning crosses on their lawns.
No no no. You got it wrong. It is the rich we are supposed to hate; and you burn a lower case t on their lawn as a sign that it is time to leave.
And if that fails, dress up as the thing rich folk are most scared of, ghosts.
This space unintentionally left blank.
Well then. When the next election comes vote for someone else.
On behalf of Republicans everywhere, I'd like to apologize for the fact that our party includes some idiots like this congressman. We're working on replacing these fools.
As someone else mentioned, this guy has been in elected office since the 1960s (longer even than Hill & Billy), and he doesn't seem to have a clue about what's going on in the real world in the 21st century.
It doesn't matter whether you have to use internet or not. It's like arguing against equipping cars with safety belts because you don't have to use cars.
And the thing is that if you start regulating the Internet like a utility, if we did that right at the beginning, we would have no Internet
This claim is patently false. The distinguished congressman should strive to get his facts from more sources than just the lobbyists that are paid to persuade him to a certain perspective.
I was involved with internet comunications early on, and by the early 80's the internet was successfully moving into widespread commercial use. The "internet" was a collection of cooperating private and public funded networks that provided a single function: moving packets from one IP address to another. In the 80's, and both before and after for a good while, this collection of networks that together provided the "internet" took no action outside what one would expect of a "utility" service. There was no need to consider regulation like a utility because these companies were self regulating.
No, the problem is now that these companies want to extract additional revenue from the data they carry by LOOKING AT IT and then either making weighted decisions based on that information, or outright SELLING IT. When this starts happening, reasonable people start to cry foul, and THEN you have the issue of regulation come up as one method to solve the problem.
I'm not sure how rational people can justify this mindset. We pay our ISP to move packets from our IP address to others, and vice versa. This is no different conceptually than placing calls on the telephone network, or sending letters via the postal service. Phone companies and the postal service cannot, without a warrant, allow access to the communications and letters they transport. It is also illegal for third parties to intercept and 'read' these communications. So why then do we think it is in the best interests of our population to NOT have similar protections when we pay our ISPs to move packets of our information around?
> Mercers' and Koch Brothers' money will ensure that he gets replaced by someone even more authoritarian.
So you think he'll be replaced by someone who WOULD support a law prohibiting trading services for privacy?
"Authoritarian" means *more* rules, not fewer. This Congressman argued for fewer rules. In this particular case, the argument he made was a stupid one, but anyway it's the opposite of authoritarian. An authoritarian leader is one who seeks to impose more rules and laws. This guy argues that the internet flourished due to relatively few laws, so we shouldn't make laws unless they absolutely necessary. Precisely the opposite of authoritarianism. (And he supported his anarchist / limited government position by making a stupid argument).
Probably doesn't matter if they "don't have to vote for him" because his district is probably gerrymandered like so many of them are. Voters can't pick their so-called Representatives when the district boundaries have already picked the "right" voters.
Only solution I've been able to come up with would be "guest voting" for your representative. If you feel like your vote is pointless in your own district (as for example after it's been gerrymandered 150 miles like mine), then you can pick one of the neighboring districts and vote for a representative in that district. The more they gerrymander the districts, the more they are liable to get screwed up by guest voters. Another interesting wrinkle is that third-party voters could concentrate on one district and get some Congressional so-called representation. Of course, it would never happen. Pretty certain it would require a Constitutional amendment, and even if they got the amendment, the bastards would just come up with some new cheating game.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
What this ammounts to is the same issue several politicians have: there are too many people in representative positions that are completely disconnected with reality and will rule and give justifications for their actions that are incompatible with the reality of the nation they are supposed to represent.
If all we have are old rich white priviledged people in power, the interests that will be addressed are those of old rich white priviledged people. Of course for him Internet is something that can be optional because he doesn't care about getting a job, getting education for the modern era, dealing with everyday problems the plebs needs to, nor care for adapting himself to a modern age he has no need to care for. He can spend whatever is left of his decrepit life with family and friends he already has, spending all the money he has exploited from others and whatnot.
Give me a job like his, a salary like his, a routine like his and a life expectancy like his and I also wouldn't care about having an Internet connection or not. It's just too sad that we have congressmen who cannot see beyond their own needs and their own personal perspectives. It's alarming how many politicians cannot get out of their own bubble to reflect on what is most important for his constituents. Corruption and lobbying aside, we're looking at bigger cultural problems here where we cannot elect people who are able to represent adequately.
Cases like his are why culture, law and policies get pushed back to half a century ago and never progress. The rule of a priviledged minority disconnected with reality. The problem this time is that we're on the frontier of a paradigm shift, and if we can't get law and policies to follow the significant changes that are happening around us, we'll get trampled by it. This is akim to the nuclear age. We have an extremely powerful tool in our hands that is about to be misused
and subverted by the wishes of a powerful minority because people in power have no idea of the true consequences of mishandling it.
> There is plenty wrong with the Democrat party that I'd love to see fixed, but right now voting for a Republican candidate is a non-starter.
For me, I can't vote for a party anymore. I have to take the extra time to research the candidates - and not just glance at headlines. Both parties have some ridiculously bad candidates and a few good ones.
> If the GOP would ditch the anti-science and pro-Christianity views, it could turn into a party that I might actually support.
Right now I think there are three factions, or branches, in the Republican party. The Moral Majority of the Reagan years is officially gone, bankrupt and no more. The party was going much more Libertarian; now Trump supporters voted "Republican" this last time - though Trump has little in common with traditional Republicans. Grabbing them by the pussy isn't a Christian ideal. "It is easier for a camel to fit through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the Kingdom of Heaven", Christians are reminded, and a billionaire won the Republican nomination, so there's a large, decidedly non-Christian element who voted Republican in this election.
> If you are against "rules"
I didn't say I'm against rules. I haven't said anything about what I'm for or against. I just keep asking you what you think, and you keep not answering, preferring to attack. "I'm not sure" yet is a perfectly valid answer - perhaps the wisest answer, so if you're still open-minded, if you haven't decided, you can sure say that. No need to try to attack me for asking.
For example, you just said.
> laws concerning what products I can grow in my garden and eat or smoke
That suggests you think legalizing marijuana is a probably a good idea. It sounds like you'd strongly agree with this statement:
__
Individuals have the freedom and responsibility to decide what they knowingly and voluntarily consume, and what risks they accept to their own health, finances, safety, or life.
--
That's the top item on the Libertarian platform.
Yet, your sig is that Libertarians are "tards". In one sentence you advocate the same the position that is the very top of the Libertarian platform, then you immediately call them "tards".
Have you not yet made up your mind, or are we having a bit of a communication problem? I keep asking the same question, you keep not answering. I'm not sure where to go from here if you just want to attack, attack, attack (without knowing what you're attacking), and don't want to have any discussion.
The intersection of money and politics is a problem. Probably an unsolvable problem for reasons that are beyond the scope of this post.
Charles Koch compared the contest between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton to being asked to choose cancer or a heart attack. He then compared Trump to Hitler https://www.theguardian.com/us...
Yet Trump is president, having run as a Republican. Clearly the Koch brothers don't in fact pick the president, nor the republican nominee. In fact, most powerful republicans opposed Trump's nomination; the de-facto leader of the party and 3rd in the line of succession, House Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, refused to endorse or defend Trump. All the powerful people (and arguably all the well-informed people) opposed Trump, yet he's president simply because ordinary voters liked what he had to say, more than they liked Clinton or Cruz, anyway.
A few years ago we ran a college student for city council, because we weren't happy with what some of the old fogeys on the council were doing. Our favorite word, "authoritarian" might apply to the established council. :)
The college student won, because we voted for him, and he got under the established council-members' skin because he wouldn't play the game. Much like Bernie Sanders or Rand Paul, this college student (Jess Fields) refused to go along with the rest of the council when they weren't doing the right thing. Jess is now running for the state legislature, and we fully expect he'll win.
If Bernie Sanders and Rand Paul can get elected to Congress, as much as they grate on the establishment, there's no reason we can't elect Jess Fields to Congress in a few years. He's a lot brighter, and representative of the people, than the idiot Congressman this article is about.
> What you just did is to confirm that you are out of step with the party that you apparently support.
As I mentioned elsewhere in this thread, these days I can't vote for a party, I have to spend the time to select a candidate, on their merits. As an example, for me, both Hillary and Trump seemed to be rather bad options, so I wouldn't vote for either based on party. I voted against Trump twice and against Hillary once.
In the *primaries* I must choose whether to vote in the Republican primary, the Democrat, or the Libertarian. For reasons outside the scope of this post, I find the general platform and approach of the Democrat leadership to be repugnant, so there are few Democrats I can support. The libertarian primary isn't strategically as important (though a libertarian vote in the general can make sense), so in the primary I end up voting with the intent of trying to get the Republicans to nominate the best (least objectionable?) candidate.
Once upon a time, before I got sick of it all, I used to call in to Conservative talk shows reminding their guests amd listeners that if conservatives support the Constitution, that means they must support the first amendment, not just the second amendment. The fourth amendment too. This because the liberals don't even pretend to value the Constitution, their shtick is ignoring ("reinterpreting") the Constitution based on how they feel from week to week. I can't make a Constitutional argument to an audience who believes the Constitution has no meaning beyond whatever their emotional gut feeling is at the moment. Again, I'm not saying conservatives follow the Constitution - I'm saying the CLAIM to. When they fail to do so, I can point out the inconsistency between their words and their actions.