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posted by takyon on Saturday March 25 2017, @07:13PM   Printer-friendly
from the shear,-milk,-but-do-not-pet-'em dept.

The Senate just voted to undo landmark rules covering your Internet privacy

U.S. senators voted 50 to 48 to approve a joint resolution from Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) that would prevent the Federal Communications Commission's privacy rules from going into effect. The resolution also would bar the FCC from ever enacting similar consumer protections. It now heads to the House.

takyon: Also at NPR, The Hill, Reuters, Ars Technica, and EFF.


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  • (Score: 4, Insightful) by bradley13 on Saturday March 25 2017, @09:05PM (7 children)

    by bradley13 (3053) on Saturday March 25 2017, @09:05PM (#484185) Homepage Journal

    The privacy protections would be a good thing, in a world of regulation. OTOH, if would be fine if no government regulated the internet, meaning (for example) that no ISP would have a guaranteed monopoly anywhere.

    The problem comes when you get half-assed regulation, also known as corporate cronyism. The government regulates in favor of the entrenched companies and chokes out their competition. Then those companies donate generously to...um, re-election campaigns, yeah, that's the ticket. Funny how the net worth of Congresscritters increases so quickly while they are in office.

    That's what it is in the case. ISPs think they can sell your data for $$$, so some of those $$$ are flowing into the "right" hands. Comcast is one of your big US ISPs, right? $7 million in campaign donations last year, and $15 million in lobbying. [opensecrets.org] That money clearly has nothing to do with their political convictions, because it's spread evenly across the political spectrun: they clearly want to make sure that everyone is indebted to them. They donated just as much to Bernie Sanders as to Jeb Bush. Pretty much the same amout to the various D-organisations as to the R-organizations. Quite a lot to Hillary's campaign, although (oops) they forgot to donate to Trump - I'm sure they won't make that mistake again. Similar numbers for AT&T, Time Warner and other big US ISPs.

    I don't know what the solution is for campaign financing. You don't want only the rich to be able to run for office. But allowing special interests to buy influence is also not a great solution, and that's what you've got right now.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 25 2017, @09:38PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 25 2017, @09:38PM (#484196)

    I am all for fixing our political process to remove the influence of money, but "OTOH, if would be fine if no government regulated the internet, meaning (for example) that no ISP would have a guaranteed monopoly anywhere" is not quite what would really happen. Unregulated markets tend towards monopolization since the big players can buy / bully their smaller competitors. Simple human greed and ambition is the problem, so we need checks and balances to make sure one person can not mess up the whole. The problem with regulation is making sure it works, and a recurring problem is regulation that is ineffective and counter productive. Not sure how to make the system strict yet flexible.

  • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 25 2017, @09:39PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 25 2017, @09:39PM (#484198)

    > meaning (for example) that no ISP would have a guaranteed monopoly anywhere.

    Guaranteed monopolies for ISPs have been illegal for decades.
    The 1992 Cable Act [niu.edu] made it illegal for municipalities to grant exclusive franchises or even to enable de-facto exclusive franchises by unreasonably with-holding franchise agreements from any company that meets the established requirements.

    That hasn't stopped natural monopolies from forming due to the large investment required to build out a cable plant. But its not the government doing it.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 25 2017, @11:24PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 25 2017, @11:24PM (#484219)

      "Alternative facts" aka truth smackdown!

      The mythical "free market" is just as likely to occur as the mythical "communist utopia". In both cases humans corrupt the system instead of following the idealistic rules that would make the world better for everyone.

  • (Score: 2) by Sulla on Sunday March 26 2017, @12:07AM (2 children)

    by Sulla (5173) on Sunday March 26 2017, @12:07AM (#484226) Journal

    I wonder which of the Dems would have caved first if there was a threat that the resolution would fail.

    The only thing I have seen recently on campaign finance reform I like was the restriction of trump admin people from serving in certain govt contractor positions or lobbying for something like 7 years after leaving office. Similar restriction on generals but also includes foreign governments. I guess that is more of general corruption, and it will probably not amount to anything, but first time in a long time anyone has even talked about it. Would love to see some restrictions on congress and senate.

    I think term limits might help somewhat, but only for long enough for corporations to find a new way to be corrupt.

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    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 26 2017, @01:14AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 26 2017, @01:14AM (#484237)

      I wonder which of the Dems would have caved first if there was a threat that the resolution would fail.

      Lol. It would never even have put up for a vote if the democrats were in charge. That's why it waited until this year.

      The only thing I have seen recently on campaign finance reform I like was the restriction of trump admin people from serving in certain govt contractor positions or lobbying for something like 7 years after leaving office.

      It is five years. But its a sham. They can immediately start lobbying other parts of the government that they did not work for directly even if they built relationships with those departments through inter-agency work. Under Obama they had to wait two years before they could register as a lobbyist at all and that was generally enough to keep them honest because 2 years on ice is a long-ass time in politics. Grump also eliminated Obama's ban on hiring lobbyists less than 2 years out of the game, now they can be hired as long as it isn't a department that they had officially lobbied within the last 2 years.

      Also Grump can issue waivers in secret, under Obama all waivers were public (and thus we know there weren't too many of them).

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 26 2017, @06:53PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday March 26 2017, @06:53PM (#484415)

        Smells kinda swampy.

  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by Murdoc on Sunday March 26 2017, @12:26AM

    by Murdoc (2518) on Sunday March 26 2017, @12:26AM (#484229) Homepage

    I'd thought it'd be simple: Take it out of federal money, each candidate gets a set amount, say $10,000. Can't run an effective ad campaign for that? Good! We don't need any more advertising. Just a web page with some relevant facts on it: your qualifications, your past voting behaviour (if any), your platform, stuff like that. None of this "I'll make America Great Again!" BS. That's what every politician says, essentially. It's a waste of time, money, and bandwidth, not to mention blatant appeal to emotion.

    Of course, getting things to change to this I imagine would be nearly impossible, but that's what's needed.