SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
We had two story submissions on reactions to the US Congress deciding that one's ISP browsing history need not be private.
Protesters raise more than $200,000 to buy Congress’s browsing histories
Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
After Congress voted Tuesday to dismantle landmark privacy protections for Internet users, pockets of the Web erupted in a mixture of fury and fear.
Among other changes, this legislation would make it easier, and legal, for Internet service providers (ISPs) to both gather and sell personal information including Web browsing history. In other words, AT&T could, in theory, sell to the highest bidder a list of the websites you've visited and the frequency with which you visited them.
Many Internet users aren't keen on the idea of companies selling their browsing data, so several independently came up with the same plan: They began crowdfunding campaigns to purchase the Web histories of the members who voted to wipe away those protections.
A few of these campaigns — there are at least four — are fairly small. Two, though, have raised more than a combined $200,000 as of early Thursday morning.
Misha Collins, the star of television's "Supernatural," started one such fundraiser that has raised more than $60,000 of its ambitious $500,000,000 goal.
"Great news! The House just voted to pass SJR34. We will finally be able to buy the browser history of all the Congresspeople who voted to sell our data and privacy without our consent!" he wrote in its description.
[...] Thanks, Congress, for voting to put all of our private data up for sale! We can't wait to buy yours.
— Misha Collins (@mishacollins) March 28, 2017
Purchase Private Internet Histories
Adam McElhaney, a self-described privacy activist says:
Thanks to the Senate for passing S.J.Res 34, now your Internet history can be bought.
I plan on purchasing the Internet histories of all legislators, congressmen, executives, and their families and make them easily searchable at searchinternethistory.com.
Help me raise money to buy the histories of those who took away your right to privacy for just thousands of dollars from telephone and ISPs. Your private data will be bought and sold to marketing companies, law enforcement.
Let's turn the tables. Let's buy THEIR history and make it available.
[Ed Note: The Verge has a good article on why although this is well intentioned, it's not going to work.]
(Score: 0, Troll) by jmorris on Friday March 31 2017, @08:08PM (3 children)
Gofundme has ended campaigns for people with the "wrong" politics. Now they are allowing a campaign that explicitly seeks to commit a crime because their politics are correct. Paypal closes accounts for the "wrong" politics and throws obstacles in the way of actually getting the money out for a lot more accounts. Twitter is doing the same thing, Facebook is doing it, Google is doing it at their Youtube and news operations and suspected of manipulating search results for political purposes. Even 4chan and reddit are banning entire forums for having the "wrong" sort of people discussing the "wrong" sort of things. This very site exists largely because of the antics of a certain other website that decided attacking their "undesirable" users was a good idea.
So we are seeing Alt-Tech becoming a thing. Because the Internet sees censorship as damage and routes around it.
(Score: 2, Touché) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday March 31 2017, @08:35PM
This is the exact opposite of the alt-reich you goosestepping pigfucker. The people this is intended to harm are the ones on your side. If you're gonna call it alt-anything, this is alt-left. Piss off.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Friday March 31 2017, @09:27PM
How exactly is what they're trying to do a crime?
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Monday April 03 2017, @03:25PM
The entire point is that Congress has just passed a law declaring that it is NOT a crime. RTFS.