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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The EFF's site points out that more than 83% of Americans support the privacy regulations which were repealed in March by the U.S. Congress, according to a new poll released last week.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The EFF's site points out that more than 83% of Americans support the privacy regulations which were repealed in March by the U.S. Congress, according to a new poll released last week.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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
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.
He means that he'll doubleclick on the icon for Trumpet Winsock, click on the "Dial" button, beep-boop-beep-boop-boop-beep-boop (pause) hmmmmbeepitybeewhoooooshcracklewhooosh (silence) and then a few seconds later, Eudora will suddenly report he has one new mail message. How do they know??! HOW DO THEY KNOW?!!!
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Many are also opposed to companies not telling you they are spying on you, or hiding it in sophistry about increasing your experience at the bottom of page 97 of a click thru, where they know you will misunderstand and hope and pray you don't figure it out, for their financial benefit.
That is fraud, and stopping fraud is a legitimate interest.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
... 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.
Find the slashdot classic setting buried in settings. I use slashdot like it is 2007 none of the Web 2.0 crap that screws up and slows doing browsing. Back to original style threading etc.
I have to stay logged in but if I do that then ad blocker works fine.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
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.
This whole "privacy is dead" thing used to bug me too because I value my privacy pretty highly. It really means that if you want to use a lot of the modern tools we have available to us you have no choice but to give up your privacy.
If you want to get directions to a destination you have to turn on location services on your phone which then sends your location to a server to generate the maps/directions. You have the same problem if you're a runner or cyclist who wants to track their workouts. All of the data is stored and processed somewhere else.
If you install a messenger/comms app on your phone it wants to read your contacts so you don't have to manually copy the entries over. Who knows what else that app does with the information? If you use a hosted email service they have the ability to read your cleartext messages. If you want your pictures automatically backed up to "the cloud" then the provider can access them.
I would think that there would be a market for privacy protecting electronic devices. They would allow data to flow in from the Internet, but not back out. Any device to device communication would be done by physically touching the two together. All personal data would be stored locally and encrypted, possibly on a removable media card. Maps would be downloadable, but path generation, location tracking and logging would be done locally.