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The EFF's site points out that more than 83% of Americans support the privacy regulations which were repealed in March by the U.S. Congress, according to a new poll released last week.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:

• 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.

Comments

Privacy is dead, move on

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Privacy is dead, move on

[Anonymous Coward]

Privacy CAN NEVER DIE, simply because privacy is a NEED, not a consumer product, nor is it a protection.

So I think you sir are full of it, and by announcing the death of privacy and encouraging people to ignore privacy and "move on", you are imo lulling people into a sense of defeatism.

For all I know, you could be someone that is actively lobbying against privacy as a right, as if you were then working for some government organization that prey on people's privacy, or worse. In that case, what you wrote there would be state driven propaganda.

Btw, I get annoyed when I read about a security researcher putting forth the argument and the point that people are to be blamed, because of how people supposedly don't care, and although it is perfectly ok to opine that people don't seem to care, blaming people enmasse, is not only wrong, it also have this veneer of propaganda like attitude, short of something fascist, as if taking on oneself to be speaking on behalf on all people, and berating them, or commanding them in ways.

Re:Privacy is dead, move on

[Zontar The Mindless]

Notice that mail in your inbox which "appears" right at the moment you get online?

No idea what you're talking about. Feel free to elaborate.

Re:More EFF Scaremongering for Profit

[chefmonkey]

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.