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The FCC broadband privacy rules have now been repealed by both the Senate and the House, and the repeal is highly likely to be approved by President Trump. This has generated interest (and advertising) for VPN services:
The vote by the U.S. Congress to repeal rules that limit how internet service providers can use customer data has generated renewed interest in an old internet technology: virtual private networks, or VPNs.
[...] "Time to start using a VPN at home," Vijaya Gadde, general counsel of Twitter Inc, said in a tweet on Tuesday that was retweeted by Twitter Chief Executive Jack Dorsey. Gadde was not immediately available for comment. Twitter said she was commenting in her personal capacity and not on behalf of the company.
[...] Some smaller broadband providers are now seizing on privacy as a competitive advantage. Sonic, a California-based broadband provider, offers a free VPN service to its customers so they can connect to its network when they are not home. That ensures that when Sonic users log on to wi-fi at a coffee shop or hotel, for example, their data is not collected by that establishment's broadband provider. "We see VPN as being important for our customers when they're not on our network. They can take it with them on the road," CEO Dane Jasper said.
[...] Private Internet Access, a VPN provider, took a visible stand against the repeal measure when it bought a full-page ad in the New York Times on Sunday. But the company, which boasts about a million subscribers, potentially stands to benefit from the legislation, acknowledged marketing director Caleb Chen.
VPNs have drawbacks. They funnel all user traffic through one point, so they are an attractive target for hackers and spies. The biggest obstacle to their routine use as a privacy safeguard is that they can be too much of a hassle to set up for many customers. They also cost money.
(Score: 3, Disagree) by Hairyfeet on Thursday March 30 2017, @12:04PM (7 children)
Uhhh unless I missed something I thought that ISPs are not common carriers [arstechnica.com] which is why the courts struck down huge chunks of Obama's FCC changes because with ISPs not being common carriers it was a job for the FTC.
So it sounds like Trump is putting it back to where ISPs were before Obama changed it [dailytech.com] and I frankly have to wonder WTH is going through anyone's mind if they want MORE government intervention into the Internet after Wikileaks...seriously guys after all the shit that has come out these past couple of years you want to give the government more control over one of the last bastions of free expression we have left in this country...good God man why?
Personally I don't think that is a good idea, especially since the common carrier law is from FDR's administration, the same guy that abused the commerce clause so damned badly we are still dealing with the fallout from it to this very day.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Thursday March 30 2017, @12:40PM (3 children)
So it sounds like Trump is putting it back to where ISPs were before Obama changed it and I frankly have to wonder WTH is going through anyone's mind if they want MORE government intervention into the Internet after Wikileaks...seriously guys after all the shit that has come out these past couple of years you want to give the government more control over one of the last bastions of free expression we have left in this country...good God man why?
Actually, it's Trump putting it back where ISPs were before Obama put right the change that the Baby Bush FCC put into effect in 2002.
You're being really disingenuous about "giving the government more control" here.
Common Carrier status (and the privacy rules that are being revoked) keep *corporations* from usurping control over PII and browsing metadata (not to mention the competition/innovation killing and barriers to entry potential of rolling back net neutrality) from U.S. persons.
Your fantasy about the evil gub'mint which, I'm sure is quite satisfying and has given you dozens of orgasms, doesn't represent realty.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Thursday March 30 2017, @12:41PM
Your fantasy about the evil gub'mint which, I'm sure is quite satisfying and has given you dozens of orgasms, doesn't represent realty.
Or reality, for that matter.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Immerman on Thursday March 30 2017, @01:06PM (1 child)
To be fair, you've got to be pretty naive, even willfully blind, to *not* recognize that our government is pretty thoroughly woven through with evil.
It's just that it's *also* our only real defense against the long-proven evil of corporate control (a.k.a. robber barons, merchant princes, etc.)
Personally, until someone figures out some way to actually not be ruled by evil, I'd rather not start by eliminating the only evil that has an incentive to at least pretend to represent our interests, rather than just using private armies to gun us down in the streets any time we try to resist - which was pretty much exactly what happened during the robber baron days.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Thursday March 30 2017, @05:39PM
To be fair, you've got to be pretty naive, even willfully blind, to *not* recognize that our government is pretty thoroughly woven through with evil.
Yes, for some parts of the government that's true. And both the banality of it and the rationalization as to why it's "okay" is quite striking. There are quite a few things (Section 702 spying [eff.org], PRISM [wikipedia.org], Targeted Assassination programs [aclu.org] and a raft of other issues) that U.S. government does that disgust me.
However, when it actually does something beneficial, we should loudly support it, just as we should loudly protest the deleterious actions of the government.
Supporting net neutrality and the privacy of customers' sensitive, private data (browsing history, data transfers, PII, etc., etc., etc.) are most certainly beneficial to U.S. persons.
Braying "gub'mint bad! bad gub'mint!" and rejoicing when other bad actors are given a free pass to screw us over is moronic at best.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 4, Informative) by tonyPick on Thursday March 30 2017, @02:19PM (2 children)
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier [wikipedia.org]
The carriers appealed, and lost in 2016: https://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2016/06/us-net-neutrality-and-title-ii-win-in-court-isps-lose-case-against-fcc/ [arstechnica.co.uk]
There may be later appeals, but I haven't got a reference to them to hand...
(Score: 5, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Thursday March 30 2017, @05:42PM (1 child)
The ISPs were common carriers until 2002 and then reclassified
The reclassification back to common carrier status in 2015 fixed that, even if only briefly.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 4, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday March 30 2017, @05:54PM
Thanks to you and others for injecting some reason (and facts) into this thread. I don't get why so many people seem to want to defend this action or pretend it did nothing wrong or even nothing significant.
Yes, the new rules hadn't gone into effect yet, but they were designed to offer greater privacy protection for ISP data than you'd expect to get in many other circumstances. Those claiming this would just revert to FTC jurisdiction don't realize (or aren't being honest in admitting) that the default protections afforded there wouldn't have been as strong as these rules were. Given recent court rulings about regulation, it's even a greater mess now.