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posted by Fnord666 on Monday November 27 2017, @02:26AM   Printer-friendly
from the which-did-you-vote-for dept.

https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/29/15100620/congress-fcc-isp-web-browsing-privacy-fire-sale

Republicans in Congress just voted to reverse a landmark FCC privacy rule that opens the door for ISPs to sell customer data. Lawmakers provided no credible reason for this being in the interest of Americans, except for vague platitudes about "consumer choice" and "free markets," as if consumers at the mercy of their local internet monopoly are craving to have their web history quietly sold to marketers and any other third party willing to pay.

The only people who seem to want this are the people who are going to make lots of money from it. (Hint: they work for companies like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T.) Incidentally, these people and their companies routinely give lots of money to members of Congress.

So here [below in the article] is a list of the lawmakers who voted to betray you, and how much money they received from the telecom industry in their most recent election cycle.


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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by zocalo on Monday November 27 2017, @09:34AM (1 child)

    by zocalo (302) on Monday November 27 2017, @09:34AM (#602004)
    The FTC vs. FCC jurisdictional thing is one of the reasons pro-repeal supporters were (still are?) using to justify this, IIRC. Their argument was that we can't make the FTC properly responsible for ISPs while the FCC has limited purview, so we need to strip the FCC's powers first in order to give much better powers to the FTC. MAGA. etc., etc. There's a kind of legal logic in the principle there, although it's debatable which body would be able to do the better job. It's the same approach that's being deployed for Obamacare: get rid of the current system, leaving the corporations without oversight and their customers twisting in the breeze, and then bring in the new and improved regulations later.

    The problem is that "later". Sure, they could do that (and if you believe they will then I've got an ICO you might be interested in). Or they could defer "later" until it becomes "never" and the customer gets screwed over, just as the industry lobbyists wanted all along. Or, if the peons get too uppity, they can throw some ridiculous proposals out there and rely on the completely partisan two party system to gut it completely for the same result, then blame the other side of the aisle for all the problems. But hey, the free market and healthy competition will prevail, right?
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @04:18PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @04:18PM (#602090)

    "The FTC vs. FCC jurisdictional thing"

    If the FCC and FTC don't have the competency to hand the issue over in an unintrusive way, then they don't have the competency to manage the issue, period. Which is to say, that both are acknowledging that they are unwilling or unable to do the duties defined in their oaths.

    The only reasonable response to that, is to eliminate the threat in perpetuity by breaking up the monopolies and passing regulation to keep them broken up. .