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Verizon Wants To Ban States From Protecting Your Privacy (dslreports.com)
DSLReports that Verizon sent a letter and white paper last week to the FCC, insisting that "the FCC has ample authority to pre-empt state efforts to protect consumer privacy, and should act to prevent states from doing so." Verizon's letter reads in part: "Allowing every State and locality to chart its own course for regulating broadband is a recipe for disaster. It would impose localized and likely inconsistent burdens on an inherently interstate service, would drive up costs, and would frustrate federal efforts to encourage investment and deployment by restoring the free market that long characterized Internet access service." From the report: But there's several things Verizon is ignoring here. One being that the only reason states are trying to pass privacy laws is because Verizon lobbyists convinced former Verizon lawyer and FCC boss Ajit Pai that it was a good idea to kill the FCC's relatively modest rules. It's also worth noting that ISPs like Verizon (and the lawmakers paid to love them) have cried about protecting "states rights" when states try to pass protectionist laws hamstringing competitors, but in this case appears eager to trample those same state rights should states actually try and protect consumers. Verizon makes it abundantly clear it's also worried that when the FCC votes to kill net neutrality rules later this year, states will similarly try to pass their own rules protecting consumers, something Verizon clearly doesn't want. "States and localities have given strong indications that they are prepared to take a similar approach to net neutrality laws if they are dissatisfied with the result of the Restoring Internet Freedom proceeding," complains Verizon, again ignoring that its lawsuits are the reason that's happening.
"Restoring Internet Freedom" etc etc etc You just know when they use world like this it means the exact opposite, sort of the like "Peoples Democratic Republic of North Korea"
We should make it illegal for Verizon to send shit to the FCC, period. No cash. No gifts. No threats, suggestions, hints, love letters, junk mail, or flowers. This has go to stop. Just shut the fuck up, Verizon. Shut the fuck up now.
You get that the states are not separate private corporate entities, right? They're effectively just groups of people. Oh, wait, you probably don't actually know that because you're Russian and have no rights. Sorry, I guess that was insensitive of me.
if both do the "same thing", then it's nationwide.
The current climate has allowed the FCC to regulate and "protect" people's privacy. The problem with the FCC doing it is their agenda changes via administrations and corporate meddling. Of course providers are going to get testy when states take matters in their own hands and regulate things the proper way via 10th Amendment and using a legislature, instead of a regulatory independent agency and an executive branch that chooses the regulatory body which violates the constitution and opens the door for abuse. The FCC must die and states must take matters into their own hands and get the federal government out of it as much as possible. That is where true freedom is going to come from (sorry net neutrality was never that avenue) and it is the duty of the each People of the each state to hold their state government bodies accountable when they try to follow in the footsteps the federal government has shown.
States Rights are just about the only Constitutional thing protecting normal states from the corporate nazis in Washington DC.
Table-ized A.I.
Not if it's a stupid standard.
Table-ized A.I.
Government by the Corporation for the Corporation. The Corporation is Mother, the Corporation if Father.
So far, freedom has meant allowing a destruction of net neutrality...allowing ISP to sell your browser history, and destruction of locally sourced news so some anodyne studio can put out bland non-news like radio DJs. I get that you wanted a shit disturber, but the only disturbance is allowing Companies to do whatever they want...not even a bone tossed to the rest of us. Thanks, flyover.
Why? If there are 50 standards, it would be reasonable for Verizon to set a single policy that simply meets or beats every single one of them. The only increase in the costs that is necessary is the analysis to create the virtual super-standard that meets them all.
It is their choice to decide whether it is worth it to them to go to the extra expense of splitting their system to take advantage of the lower standards in some states to make more profits off of their user's data. I would hope they'd take a higher road but certainly don't expect them to.
If Team - A ( Congress ) can't come up with a plan to protect everyone's privacy, then Team - B ( The States ) will do it themselves.
The latter is likely to create a regulatory minefield for the players in question, so it would be in their best interests to pressure Team - A to get off their ass and do their job.
Considering the current Congress track record of doing anything GOOD for anyone ( other than themselves ) you might hire some minesweepers for you.
Have fun.
Everybody makes encrypted connections to an exchange and no data ever leaves that exchange in the clear. It doesn't store anything and only connects encrypted tunnel end points. Kind of like a VPN, if you could only talk to other users of the same VPN, except that's everybody so it's no problem. A big part of the internet is relayed through big commercial internet exchanges, so this wouldn't be very different from today's internet, except none of the providers could see what they're carrying.
Free market ideology only works when the playing field is level... not when monopolies exist
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson
California has it's own standards. The EPA can go and fsck themselves. Want to sell cars in California? Meet CARB standards. Don't want to build 50 versions of cars? Make them all meet CARB. Same idea for privacy.
[Oblig. Bad Car analogy.]
Have gnu, will travel.
The Republicans are all about a small, limited Federal government, with control be handled at the state and local level. Consistent with this, the FCC will never interfere with local efforts to protect privacy.
I'm not sure where the representatives of We The People have gone. Anyone seen any around D.C. lately?
It's an overreach of FCC power if it goes against his current bankroller... er, Verizon Wireless... when it comes to Net Neutrality. But the FCC can now override the 10th Amendment of the Constitution??
What balls on that FCC chairman... Unbelievable.
They're effectively just groups of people.
No, they are legal entities which have rights with respect to the other legal entity -- the Federal Government. Which people live in which states changes as people pick and choose where they live. You probably don't get that because you are an idiot, but that must be insensitive of me. The Federal Government, btw, is fully within its rights to regulate "interstate commerce"; so, on this issue, state rights are subservient to the Federal Government's enumerated powers.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Why only Verizon? The Federal Government created the legal framework for corporate mergers. Now they are used to avoid taxes on transfer of money and property between corporate entities and to suppress competition. The Federal Government can remove the legal framework for corporate mergers.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Verizon's letter reads in part: "Allowing every State and locality to chart its own course for regulating broadband is a recipe for disaster. It would impose localized and likely inconsistent burdens on an inherently interstate service, would drive up costs, and would frustrate federal efforts..."
This line of reasoning could also be used for taking away most of the state rights. Inconsistent set of rules across states for roads, criminal justice, elections... Taken to an extreme, UN should be making rules for everybody.
In Europe before the EU if a large corporation wanted to lobby for something unpopular it had to do it with national governments. So in the UK that meant it needed to lobby MPs. MPs are of course elected and know that, in theory if they backed something highly unpopular they could be challenged. Of course this doesn't really limit scope for corruption much in practice but there have still been cases where MPs flipped their stance on a law because of its unpopularity. Governments have failed to pass unpopular laws because of backbench rebellions. I.e. MPs who are part of the government party but didn't get a seat in government vote against the government.
Now in many ways the EU is a solution to this problem, from the of the lobbyists. Lobby at the European Commission level and you're lobbying appointed, not elected politicians who therefore don't care about public opinion. The European Commission is the body that initiates legislation in the European Parliament. It can also introduces directives which national governments are obligated to implement - the EU can take them to court if they do not. So if you're a lobbyist it's easy to get stuff pushed down from the EU level that you couldn't get passed national parliaments.
Now the US isn't quite as bad as this, but it still has the possibility for lobbyists for monopolists like Verizon to push laws down from the Federal level onto states. Quite possibly laws it couldn't get passed in one state legislator, let alone all of them. Famously most US Congress people run in gerrymandered seats where the other party has no chance of unseating them and are only vulnerable to being primaried by their own party. Re-election rates are 84-85% and yet Congress's approval rating is 15%. Of course money from lobbyists helps unpopular incumbents defeat less unpopular challengers. I.e. Federal politicians are more powerful and less accountable than politicians at the state level.
I.e. adding more layers of increasingly indirectly accountable government makes things worse for consumers, but better for monopolist corporations. Of course the ultimate for the lobbyists would be to have laws at the NAFTA level and make sure that politicians there are appointed and not elected. Only then would the US's lobbyists have created an environment as conducive to them as the EU is to their European counterparts.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
1) Don't snoop.
2) If your business plan requires you to snoop, refer to item 1.
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delendae sunt RIAA, MPAA et Windoze
If a large corporation is requesting specific regulations, the best course of action for the average American is to give them the opposite.
Most of the basic rules for fairness have been in place for years; new requests usually lead to profiteering, abuse of customers, or restriction of competition. It looks like Verizon is aiming for two of those things.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
The Federal Government, btw, is fully within its rights to regulate "interstate commerce"; so, on this issue, state rights are subservient to the Federal Government's enumerated powers.
Absolutely correct.
And I believe the federal government should mandate robust privacy protections on all providers of telecommunications and information services.
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According to the latest ruleset, this post should be modded as Vorpal Flamebait +5.
It's about personal property. My property happens to include my data. I might be hiring an ISP to move it for me, just like I'd hire a moving company to pack and haul my household effects. But it's still all mine. Verizon can't have it. And the FCC has nothing to say about it other than to set down rules for how it will be moved. Just like the USDOT regulates the trucking industry.
Have gnu, will travel.
Sadly, I write this: Your statement is half true. Except for Regarding Insurance. They now can pass "garbage" insurance from one State to another. To top that, they don't have to follow any rules that meet any requirements or regulations your State has put in place.. Don't the monsters at the White House pass nice laws?
So in the UK that meant it needed to lobby MPs. MPs are of course elected and know that,
But in the USA, elections are a muti-million dollar business. In some cases, billions. With most of that money going to mainstream media outlets. Because of this, candidates are beholding to their funding sources to a much greater degree than in most other true democracies.
One could propose a system where media outlets (many under the regulatory authority of the FCC) would have to contribute free air time to candidates, freeing them from much of their fundraising needs and resulting quid-pro-quos. But the media lobbyists aren't about to let that sort of rule making happen.
Have gnu, will travel.
Sadly, I write this: Your statement is half true. Except for Regarding Insurance. They now can pass "garbage" insurance from one State to another. To top that, they don't have to follow any rules that meet any requirements or regulations your State has put in place.. Don't the monsters at the White House pass nice laws?
People would not need to buy "garbage" insurance policies if the government hadn't mandated they everyone is required to purchase insurance simply because they are living. And honestly, most people do not need an insurance plan that covers everything under the sun.
So if each state can set their own standards, companies will either default to high privacy standards that apply in all states, or they will have to spend inordinate amounts of money to find and exploit loopholes, right?
What's the downside?
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
We need a quick review of the history here to see that the Slashdot article misses key parts of the story.
Previously, the Federal Trade Commission regulated tech companies to protect consumer privacy.
Then the last chairman pushed forward Title II classification which stripped the FTC of their jurisdiction, killing those privacy protections and replacing them with weaker protections under the FCC.
Pai is pushing to revert that change, working with the FTC to restore the stronger consumer protections. Technically yes, he proposes to end the weak FCC protections, but it's not giving an accurate picture to present that without mentioning that he's trying to restore stronger protections in the process.
Typically, this means that states must provide at least as much regulation as the federal government, but they are not barred from providing more. One example would be the speed limit. There is currently no national speed limit. However, states can - and obviously do - set their own speed limits.
You gloss over the fact that the same law that mandated that everyone must buy insurance also mandated that insurance policies not be garbage.
We all know Ajit is going to be all for this
What's scary here isn't the fact that a company would want to promote its self-interest here, but rather the mindset that it's appealing to and that might well agree with it.
I can't get enough of Verizon complaining about problems that they themselves have caused.
You skipped the whole thing.. What "government" (we don't have one - we have corporations telling the government what to do) would allow garbage insurance to exist and cross State lines?? We don't need fire insurance for our houses either but comedian Lewis Black puts it back into sane perspective: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
The Tenth Amendment says that powers not reserved to the Federal government, like interstate commerce, which the net is, go to the states or the people. The FCC doesn't override the Tenth, because the Tenth doesn't apply.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
People would not need to buy "garbage" insurance policies if the government hadn't mandated they everyone is required to purchase insurance simply because they are living
But everyone NEEDS insurance if they're living, because no one has the choice about whether they get sick or get into an accident. If people without insurance have something catastrophic happen, they're not going to be able to pay for it. Everyone else pay for it.
So at that point, we have some options:
1) Only people who can pay out of pocket get help if they get into a car accident, or get shot on the street. Everyone else gets to die. As a society, we already decided that this is unacceptable.
2) Everyone is required to purchase insurance that actually covers these possibilities.
3) People have insurance, but people who don't want to pay still get health care. Pretty fucking unfair at that point.
4) Government cuts out the middleman and pays for all health care ("single payer"), because that's basically what they were doing already.
Which of these four options sounds good? #1 is already out. #2 is what we get post-ACA. #3 is what we had pre-ACA. #4 is the liberal wet dream.
You don't think verizon would destroy consumer privacy, all the while they are doing it in broad daylight? You kidding me? User browser histories?
How's life in the hypocrite lane?