Slashdot Mirror
American ISPS Are Now Fighting State Broadband Privacy Proposals (eff.org)
The EFF complains that "the very companies who spent millions of dollars lobbying in D.C. to repeal our federal broadband privacy rights are now fighting state attempts to protect consumers because they supposedly prefer a federal rule." The EFF urges Californians to phone their state senator ahead of a crucial back-to-back committee hearings on Tuesday. An anonymous reader writes:
"Congress stole your online privacy. Let's seize it back," begins an email that the EFF is sending to California supporters. It warns that "Big Telecom has massive amounts of money to spend on an army of lobbyists. But if Internet users from across California unite with one voice, we can defeat their misinformation campaign... Don't let the big ISPs coopt our privacy."
The EFF's site points out that more than 83% of Americans support the privacy regulations which were repealed in March by the U.S. Congress, according to a new poll released last week. That's even more than the 77% of Americans who support keeping current net neutrality protections in place, according to the same poll. The EFF now hopes that California's newly-proposed legislation could become a model for privacy-protecting laws in other states. And back in Silicon Valley, the San Jose Mercury News writes that California "has an obligation to take a lead in establishing the basic privacy rights of consumers using the Internet. Beyond being the right thing to do for the whole country, building trust in tech products is an essential long-term business strategy for the industry that was born in this region."
The EFF has also compiled an interesting list of past instances where ISPs have already tried to exploit the personal information of their customers for profit.
Here's some of the highlights from the EFF's list:
The EFF's site points out that more than 83% of Americans support the privacy regulations which were repealed in March by the U.S. Congress, according to a new poll released last week. That's even more than the 77% of Americans who support keeping current net neutrality protections in place, according to the same poll. The EFF now hopes that California's newly-proposed legislation could become a model for privacy-protecting laws in other states. And back in Silicon Valley, the San Jose Mercury News writes that California "has an obligation to take a lead in establishing the basic privacy rights of consumers using the Internet. Beyond being the right thing to do for the whole country, building trust in tech products is an essential long-term business strategy for the industry that was born in this region."
The EFF has also compiled an interesting list of past instances where ISPs have already tried to exploit the personal information of their customers for profit.
Here's some of the highlights from the EFF's list:
- In 2008, Charter play tested the idea of recording everything you do on the Internet and packaging it into profiles...
- We know as of 2015 telecom carriers worked to "ingest" data from cellphones close to 300 times a day every day across 20 to 25 million mobile subscribers (we aren't told which mobile telephone companies participate in this practice, they keep that a secret). That data is used to inform retailers about customer browsing info, geolocation, and demographic data.
- We know in 2011 ISPs engaged in search hijacking where your Internet search queries were monitored in order to be rerouted in coordination with a company called Paxfire...
- We know AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile preinstalled "Carrier IQ" on their phones, which gave them the capability to track everything you do, from what websites you visit to what applications you use. It took a class action lawsuit for the carriers to begin backing down from this idea.
- And lastly, we know in 2014 Verizon tagged every one of their mobile customers' HTTP connections with a semi permanent super-cookie, and used those super-cookies to enable third parties such as advertisers to target individual customers. Not only that, but Verizon's super-cookie also allowed unaffiliated third parties to track you, no matter what steps you took to preserve your privacy. And worst of all, AT&T was going to follow suit to get in on the action but quickly retreated after Verizon got into legal trouble with the federal government.
dysfunction gravitates downwards from the top... cease fire stand down,, that's the spirit..
Centralization works in favor of the plutocrats - only one person to bribe instead of 50.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Too many asleep while privacy was being destroyed. How many embrace sites like Facebook or Google and yet complain about ISP's? Really? What's the difference? Sure 83% support privacy but only 10% or less actually do much about it. How about smart meters on your house? Telling the electrical companies about your usage. Or the NSA collecting phone data, or the constant barrage of hackers stealing data from companies that promised to protect your information. Privacy is a joke its a oxy moron when its referred to with the internet.
I suspect that most talking points about so called "privacy" (and I put that word inside quote signs here, because 'privacy' as a mere word, I think will likely have different connotations to different people, and more importantly, for different reasons (!), like if being swayed/smooth talked by some anti-privacy argument to reframe the meaning of privacy by adding an aspect to control the discussion, as if wanting to be pragmatic, to support so called "national security" or promoting the advent of new tech solutions), are dishonest, and fundamentally wrong.
In order to have a proper understanding of something so vague sounding as "privacy", it will imo obviously be best to avoid having anything related to the word 'privacy' to become a positive laden word, or simply a laden word, because, if the core of the means of argumentation is to just sway your opinion to support a basic argument, then the meaning of 'privacy' can hold no core value, or meaning to that person being swayed by some smooth talking argument, that either distort, or fronts an interest that isn't an interest that is initially made for the people supposed to support an argument.
Imo, the ONLY way to properly use the word 'privacy', is to consider privacy to be a fulfilled need, and the next best thing (but only understood in the framing of privacy being a personal need, or rather, a need for all individuals, not just select persons or select people) is to consider 'privacy' as being a right, if only to secure a guarantee to have ones needs met.
Then, there would be things/aspects that are NOT related to privacy as such. One example would be 'protection'. "Privacy as protection", would amount to NOTHING more than an IDEA, because that is how such an idea will exist in this scheme of being something utterly pragmatic, and thus obviously, not being related to rights, or needs(!). Other dubious re-framings of "privacy" debates, would be the inclusion of business interests, not at all the interests of the individual, but the interests for the state and businesses, for sake of power and money, as if, "privacy" is to be a commodity to be sold to you, and as if privacy only would come to have value that way.
Privacy is foremost a NEED, secondly, a 'right' insofar as privacy protect the individual with the a right to a guarantee, making the individual having the power to control his/her own privacy needs, while also having privacy being 'free' in both the sense of being a guarantee in any sense of the word, and ofc not costing money as if privacy has to be bought as some kind of business or service product.
tender meat.
fresh meat.
greasy meat.
i love me some meat!
Of course they would fight this. Selling your data is a revenue stream and it's very popular these days.
We'll make great pets
This is why, at the national level, the libertarian and federalist ideals in the constitution are the best - do as much as possible as close to the people as possible - the federal government should have some role but not near as much as it does - let the states do what is right for their people and let the counties, cities, townships, and neighborhoods do what is right for themselves too.
If this were true, they would have pushed for the privacy rules to be clarified rather than repealed.
This is very much a case of "you shat that bed, now you get to lie in it." Zero sympathy for the carriers here.
Let's see some citations to go along with your claims, please.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Yeah, there's lots of citations on EFF's website /sarcasm.
I have one provider I can choose from. YEah, my state cares about my "privacy".
So, How well does it pay to be an ISP lobbyist ?
The EFF has also compiled an interesting list of past instances where ISPs have already tried to exploit the personal information of their customers for profit.
That link sends you to the page this is on.
Exactly! They successfully defeated fairly reasonable rules at the federal level, now hopefully they will get a shittrain of regulations at the level of the 50 states and the District of Columbia. Sometimes karma is a bitch.
The local police? NSA?
Tine to invest in VPN's then?
You know it makes sense...
I'd rather be riding my '63 Triumph T120.
They are making the quite valid argument that keeping track of 50 different sets of privacy rules and figuring out how to enforce them across state lines presents an undue burden, and besides that fact is a regulatory impossibility.
So if 50 small ISPs, each opererating in a different state, can each handle the regulations of their own state, do they somehow lose that capability when they all merge into one big ISP? I certainly can understand that they don't like it, but I don't see why they can't do it if that is what's required of them. It's not as if they are too small to handle it.
... because the plural of "ISP" is ISPs.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
Don't kid yourself, just the net neutrality they will get (pay) Congress to pass a new toothless regulation that bars the states from passing individual regulations. This is a time honored tradition in communications lobbying.
I'm sure Trump will go right along with it because if telecom companies can't sell your privacy to the highest bidder it will be bad for jobs.
No? Thought so.