Slashdot Mirror
Seattle Restored ISP Privacy Rules in the First Local Blow To Trump's Rollback (fastcompany.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: A majority of Americans from both parties objected to a law passed by Congress and signed by President Trump in April that gives internet service providers the go-ahead to collect and sell users' browsing history without users' consent. This week, Seattle became the first municipality in the country to fight that rollback, in effect restoring ISP privacy rules for city residents under municipal code. The city's Cable Customer Bill of Rights, dating back to 1999, gives the city authority to set privacy standards over cable providers. In a new rule added on Wednesday on the urging of Mayor Ed Murray, cable internet providers must obtain opt-in consent from users before collecting their web-browsing history or other internet usage data, including details on a person's health and finances.
It should be called Republican rollback. Trump probably https://politics.slashdot.org/... no idea what an ISP does!
This is exactly what "states rights", etc. are all about. The creeping definition of "interstate commerce" has resulted in too much centralized bureaucracy that doesn't understand the real impact.
This is no blow to Trump. It shows what he did might make more sense than some (even myself) thought. If states can regulated it, then the feds don't need to. If states choose different models, then we might find the best one and others will follow.
The ISP argument will be that only the FCC or Congress have the authority to regulate these aspects of their business.
They may argue it, but it will be hard to win since they will no longer be considered Title II utilities.
States deciding the issue for themselves is exactly the kind of thing Trump expected would happen, so this isn't any kind of resistance.
As a Californian, I hope Trump stays consistent with the state's rights theme and allows my state to continue setting our own auto emissions standards which 13 other states have adopted.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
Yea, States rights were EVIL before Trump was elected, now all sorts of people have had whiplash change of mind or are "rediscovering" Federalism. Bottom line...many people LOVE Federal power when their people are in charge and LOVE states rights and decentralized power when their people are NOT in power. It's hypocritical, but then why should that surprise me?
"States can" isn't necessarily a good motto for why federal shouldn't
That's cute, A complete opposite of what the Constitution actually says in the 10th Amendment. It says (basically) that unless it is specifically authorized by the Constitution, it is reserved to the States and People. The real reason for the Civil War wasn't slavery (and white supremacy), it was Federal supremacy. We won the battle (slavery), but lost the war (tyranny) in the process. We're just discovering how costly that loss really was.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
I wish I could have modded this up!
Exactly the point, though.... Federal govt. really shouldn't be passing blanket laws over small details on how business is done. It has a role to play when it comes to regulating interstate commerce, since that pits state against state otherwise, trying to determine if some transaction is allowed and who is in the wrong, if not.
But when I pay for broadband internet access, I do so from a company doing business in my own town, subject to a lot of local regulation. Federal govt. really shouldn't have to intervene with any of this stuff.
I think in many ways, we got lost in the whole concept of Federally regulated monopolies. (Essentially, we made the leap of logic that because it was Federal govt. who had to grant a company monopoly status, that automatically meant it was Federal who got to give it rules on how it should operate.) When you think about it, the realities of the marketplace help illustrate why that's rather flawed. (We still have local and state governments placing rules and restrictions on monopolies all the time. There's no way Federal govt. is even capable of micro-managing things at the level needed for your power companies, water and gas companies, or cable companies.) May as well just let the states and cities dictate ALL of the terms and conditions of service since they've been dictating quite a bit of them anyway, all along.