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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.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Fluffeh on Monday November 27 2017, @02:53AM (6 children)
As someone who is an external observer to what is happening in the US, I have to say guys, the last eighteen months has been like a slow motion train wreck. It just keeps piling on and on - and each time another individual incident happens - like this for example - I keep thinking "That's it, it has to stop now... that's the end..." but somehow it just keeps on going and going.
Don't get me wrong, Europe has it's own mixed bag of shit-head-ery with Brexit, the German elections, Catalonia and all the usual eastern European facepalming, the Middle East is well... I don't think that is ever going to be resolved. Africa is sadly still quite full of tribal angst - but that is pretty much all one country against another - the partisan shenanigans going on in Washington really are exceptional.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Crash on Monday November 27 2017, @03:06AM (1 child)
(Score: 2) by Fluffeh on Monday November 27 2017, @03:46AM
Fair point. Just frustrated with the state of the world - but valid point nonetheless.
(Score: 5, Informative) by rylyeh on Monday November 27 2017, @03:12AM (1 child)
Yes. This is what the conservative 'think-tanks' have given us. Corporate/Billionaire interest have 'Trumped' the interests of the people once again.
It's going to take years to undo this. Shit. 💩
"a vast crenulate shell wherein rode the grey and awful form of primal Nodens, Lord of the Great Abyss."
(Score: 2) by digitalaudiorock on Monday November 27 2017, @11:43PM
...if it's even possible. In the case of unimaginable judicial appointments [nytimes.com] it'll require that the appointees either die or do something so egregious as to warrant impeachment. That's one of the things that worries me the most.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @04:07PM
let me guess. you think a pile of un-elected thieves in Brussels is better than elected thieves in London? if you can't control the thieves in London what makes you think more thieves, further away, that aren't elected, will be better? are you some kind of moooron? Catalonia should just keep getting used by lazy ass Spain? or be allowed to make their own grievous error, depending on your perspective? either way, why should people be forced to be ruled by someone else? slavery is slavery, whether its from a leftist central authority or a gov services corp posing as a democratic republic run by corporations.
(Score: 1) by evilcam on Tuesday November 28 2017, @02:40AM
Just remember it's the "left-wing cucks" who are ruining 'Murica...
(Score: 2, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @03:12AM (5 children)
Satan: "But who would do such a thing?"
Counselor: "We'll do what we always do, use the Republicans!"
Family values, less government interference, Barely Legal in Alabama, Comcast will ream you a new one! Yes! All this and more, brought to you by the Republican Party! Naked Senators! Russian Collusion! Tax breaks for the 1%! But wait, there's more! Golf with Tiger Woods! Grabbing things by their, um, ok, not even I can keep this up. Republicans are the enemy of their own country. Time to re-elect them again, to prove that government is not the answer, and to prove that all my problems are do to illegal immigratories and sharia law.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @04:29AM (4 children)
Have you been reading this?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letters_from_the_Earth [wikipedia.org]
Highly recommended, Mark Twain the satirist at his very best.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @05:05AM (3 children)
No, I get all my material from "South Park", much to my chagrin, and shame. http://politicalmemes.blogspot.com/2013/05/south-park-satan-use-republicans.html [blogspot.com]
Not that it is not true. More about the case of Terry Shaivo [wikipedia.org], where Republicans wanted to use the blunt instrument of Government to steamroll the rights of families, just because they were not Catholic like the Bush Family, or born outside of the United States, like president Trump, who was born in Bahama, and so not legally able to be President of the United States, as it says in the Constitution, and shit.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Monday November 27 2017, @03:56PM (2 children)
What? The only Catholic president we've had so far was JFK.
No.
--
Not sure if you're trying to make some weird sort of argument via satire here, or you're just crazy.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 28 2017, @06:43AM (1 child)
OK, Jamaica, not the Bahamas, but the man is unqualified to be President, because is not a natural born citizen. Unnaturally born citizen. Possibly even alien?
Look up the Schaivo controversy. Tells you a lot about Republicans. All "freedom and individual choice", until they start telling you what bathroom you can go into, who you can marry, or what spouses you can pull the plug on, or grab by the pussie.
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Tuesday November 28 2017, @04:42PM
So crazy it is, then.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Monday November 27 2017, @03:15AM (6 children)
Provided VPNs can be explained clearly enough, there are many who would subscribe to a VPN service whose exit node is in the EU.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @04:31AM
You and Bob Cringely are thinking along the same lines, his most recent posting:
https://www.cringely.com/2017/11/22/15471/ [cringely.com]
(Score: 2) by BK on Monday November 27 2017, @04:37AM (1 child)
An exit in Europe sounds great apart from two things:
1 - The ISPs can throttle your VPN. Network non-neutrality and all. So the connection will be slow in addition to the added latency.
2 - Europe is speech & content hostile. The right to be forgotten is the tip of that iceberg. So you may only be able to access 'approved' content.
Sigh.
...but you HAVE heard of me.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @10:45AM
Where do you get that?
The right to be forgotten is an addition to other privacy laws, to prevent the corporation to just sell all the customers private information to anyone. This is a fairly new thing, so this means that currently there are still some loopholes and courts still need to test out the waters. This results in the occasional weird headline.
The headlines about universities canceling speeches come from the US, not from Europe.
But anyway, this doesn't matter in the US anymore, as anything you do online is already sold to anyone, and you can be sure that includes any and all enforcement agencies.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @06:56AM (2 children)
And tor remains a zero cost technical measure. https://www.torproject.org/projects/torbrowser.html.en [torproject.org]
Depending on the circuit you get the latency of the connection might be very close to zero or then very large. To get proper anonymity protection, you will have to change your browsing habits as well. But anything you will do, your ISP will be none the wiser.
Fuck corrupt politicians, this like something you'd expect in a banana republic...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @10:36PM
The other site had a good discussion about Cringely's suggestion WRT doing an end-run on the abandonment of Net Neutrality.
Almost everyone said that attempts will be ineffective.
Many noted that ISPs will then be able to simply whitelist what they like.
To make a point, ISPs who are also in the business of selling content might not block but would instead severely throttle their competitors (if those packets are obvious) to make those look less desirable.
Anything that an ISP doesn't like (political sites; "VerizonSucks") or can't identify (TOR, VPN) gets blocked by default.
With an ISP monopoly|duopoly in most places, if Pai's rules go through, a lot of folks are just plain screwed.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Tuesday November 28 2017, @11:18PM
that's why you need to use an unpublished bridge.
But ISPs can sniff out the use of bridges.
That's why some old crypto was deprecated. You need to download the update to Tor Browser.
The problem I've got with Tor is that KindGirls NSFW [kindgirls.com] refuses to serve clients from Tor exit nodes.
That's why I'm going to set up a VPN to my server in the Netherlands.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Monday November 27 2017, @03:52AM
Mass amounts of nearly universal internet usage data. In the age of big data combined with machine learning, the raging white hot hard-ons for this data could not be contained. It's the next gold rush. OK, not next gold rush. It's happening right now. Start selling your shovels and prospecting gear.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @04:22AM (9 children)
Just another example of Congress showing just how useless it is. A terrorist could mow down the House of Representatives and the Senate, kill them all, and not only would no one miss them, and the government would probably be improved as a result. God, if only Mark Twain were alive today, the things he could write! Democracy stinks, but there isn't a better method of governance.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Mykl on Monday November 27 2017, @05:20AM (5 children)
"Democracy"
America - you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by zocalo on Monday November 27 2017, @09:03AM (3 children)
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Nuke on Monday November 27 2017, @01:47PM (1 child)
It has not died everywhere; democracy is simply people voting for a government and clearly that still happens most places. You mistake is to assume that democracy should automatically lead to sweetness and light, and if it does not then it cannot be democracy.
Or to put it another way, you think that if it does not give the result that you want, it cannot be democracy. It was funny to see all the "democratic" liberals in the UK, following the Brexit vote, suddenly become anti-democracy and rage for the vote to be overturned.
Eh? The point of an election is to sideline the arguments and discussions, tell the losers to STFU, and for the winners to get on with whatever they want to do. It is a virtualised civil war. Or as someone said, it is like two wolves and a chicken voting what to have for dinner.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by zocalo on Monday November 27 2017, @04:01PM
Take the DPRK; they have elections, everyone chooses their preferred option (there's often only one, so it's really simple), and as a result everyone gets what they want and is happy, and it's a shining example of a functioning democracy, right? I'd actually say that if democracy was working as originally intended then almost nobody would get *exactly* what they wanted, but as many people as possible would get a result that they can at least accept and work with. Let's look at Brexit again; roughly a 50:50 split between Leave/Remain, and of the Leave vote a range of opinions from a soft exit to hard exit. That distribution most probably follows a bell curve, but even if it's a linear distribution the current hardline exit approach doesn't really work for either the best overall solution or your "You lost, STFU!" approach. Yes, the Leave vote got the majority, so fine, for better or worse that's the way it's going to be (leaving aside the whole non-binding referendum and all the other issues with the setup), and whatever the eventual outcome we're going to have to try and make the best of it - and there's nothing wrong with expecting and preparing for the worst as long as you keep hoping for the best. However, by going for a hard exit (or what seems increasingly likely to be a no-deal default , which even Leave think tanks were saying would be a disaster before the vote) the Conversatives have pretty much guaranteed that not only will most of the ~50% who voted Remain not like the outcome, but whatever proportion of Leave voters that just wanted a soft exit for some nominal improvement on a given issue won't either.
The way I see it, there are two places where ballots should occur in a typical democracy; when electing representatives, and when those representatives make decisions on what becomes law. The former should really just inform the representatives of what their constituents views are so they can represent them more effectively, and the latter should be where you get the full-on, first past the post, "You lost, STFU!", style ballots based on that informed view of the distribution of their constituent's views on the matter. A referendum is a special case that applies the latter style to the general electorate, which is fine, but as the aftermath of Brexit demonstrated they need much clearer ground rules than David Cameron set up for Brexit to avoid all of the kinds of fallout that resulted. Things like being perfectly clear over the intent to avoid the Non-Binding vs. "It's the Will of the People, we're not have a debate!" issue, any ideally a minimum turnout / super-majority requirement (which Leave actually wanted to guarantee a do-over when they lost, but promptly shut-up about once the results came in) for what is presumably a major decision given that you're having a referendum in the first place.
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 3, Insightful) by PartTimeZombie on Monday November 27 2017, @08:44PM
Those of us who live in Western nations with proportional voting, non-gerrymandered electorates, and who do not allow corporate interests to purchase the loyalty of representatives still have democracy.
The comment above about how things have got bad in the US over the last 18 months ignores the fact that things have been going downhill since (at least) your Mr. Reagan explained to the world how black was white and night was day and was rewarded with two terms as President, despite him not remembering most of his second term.
He would have been un-electable in most other Western democracies. (Although, to be fair several of your Presidents during my lifetime have been considered jokes in my country).
(Score: 2) by infodragon on Monday November 27 2017, @05:15PM
That's inconceivable!
Don't settle for shampoo, demand real poo!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @07:53AM (1 child)
"Democracy stinks, but there isn't a better method of governance."
Then perhaps you guys should become one! Your republic is obviously not working out for you, elected or not.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @10:53PM
A nation can't be both a republic and an empire.
Rome demonstrated this millenia ago.
USA.gov made the choice back in 1896 when it invaded and occupied Hawaii.
The Spanish-American War in 1898 extended the paradigm.
Pacifica Radio had an excellent presentation on this last week.
The Birth of American Empire with Stephen Kinzer [kpfa.org]
14MB MP3 [kpfk.org] (available till late January)
22MB MP3 [kpfa.org] (available forever)
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bob_super on Tuesday November 28 2017, @01:28AM
> Democracy stinks, but there isn't a better method of governance.
[citation needed]
Democracy doesn't nearly as many man-millenia of data to back it up, compared to feudalism. It keeps failing left and right after each major crisis.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by NotSanguine on Monday November 27 2017, @05:13AM (8 children)
I'd find the senior senator from my state on the list of "yes" votes, given that he's been a corporate shill ever since he beat the previous (R) corporate shill that he replaced.
But it wasn't there. Hmm...is it just because he has a 'D' after his name?
Well, I guess I hate him a little less now.
Hey all you Rs and fellow travelers, what say you about those you put in office now?
I know, I know. The morons^W libertarians are all for it. Herp, free markets. Derp, gub'mint bad! Bad gub'mint! Except what we're seeing isn't libertarianism. What we're seeing is Corporations+captured government/regulators [harvard.edu]=Oligarchic [wikipedia.org] Plutocracy [wikipedia.org].
That's not real libertarianism. That's not even real republicanism (small 'r'), although it does seem to be the sport of our plutocratic overlords. I, for one, do *not* welcome them.
Oh, and guess what? L'Orange (not to be confused with L'Grande Orange [wikipedia.org]) is one of those plutocrats. He's not your buddy and he doesn't give a rat's ass about the health and welfare of the U.S. or its citizens, unless their name is Donald J. Trump.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @05:54AM (1 child)
Shhh! Do not wake the LibertariaSheeple! Once the realize how badly they have be used, and see who's dick is up their butt, well, that is more than any human should have to bear. I say, let them sleep, with dreams of a libertarian paradise like Somalia, or Vermont. Some where where your neighbor can blind-side tackle you because you mowed going the wrong way, and spewed grass clippings on another free and sovereign individual's lawn. If only it had been Somalia. Lawn disputes are very quickly settled there, as most mowers are not hardened against RPGs. Poor Libertardtarians.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @08:08PM
You're just jealous because the Invisible Hand in Libertardtaria has provided low-cost RPG-resistant mowers!
The Invisible Hand is still working on the problem of tactical nuke-resistant mowers.
(Score: 2) by Spamalope on Monday November 27 2017, @06:16AM (2 children)
If you're going to label this corporate purchasing of policy something, why would you pick 'free market' over oligarchy? (or I guess capitalist with significant oligarch corruption)
(Score: 3, Touché) by NotSanguine on Monday November 27 2017, @07:06AM
You are absolutely right. That's what I should have said. What would I do without you?
Perhaps I could even have called it "Oligarchic Plutocracy." Yes. I'm so ashamed that I didn't do it that way.
Oh, wait, that's *exactly what I said [soylentnews.org]:
I guess my question to you is whether you just wanted to poke me with a stick or if you missed that part? I suspect it's the former since the only mention of "free markets" was in the same paragraph to which you were responding. Or am I missing something important?
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by dry on Tuesday November 28 2017, @04:46AM
It is the free market, the free market in buying government. That's the great thing about capitalism, if you have the capital, you can buy laws to make sure you get more capital as long as you have enough capital to win in the free market of congress critters.
The golden rule, he who has the gold, makes the rules.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Arik on Monday November 27 2017, @07:30AM (2 children)
In fact, there are no libertarians in Congress, and only two that come close. Neither Senator Rand Paul or Representative Justin Amash voted for this. There is nothing remotely libertarian about it, and in fact, it appears you're the only one that has hallucinated any connection to libertarianism here.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @08:02AM (1 child)
And who do these alleged "libertarian" members of Congress caucus with? Hmmm? Yep, as asserted by the ancient wisdom, libertarians are just Republicans who smoke pot. And are kinky.
(Score: 4, Touché) by c0lo on Monday November 27 2017, @08:16AM
Kinky good. Sleazy bad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @05:49AM
The article is dated March 29th 2017.
The summary is a bit misleading with that direct quote.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Monday November 27 2017, @05:58AM (3 children)
Consumer protection laws should be the bailiwick of consumer protection agencies. They have the experience and the enforcement experience and capability that the FCC does not have.
This was always an FTC issue not an FCC issue.
Just like No Cellphone Usage in Airplanes was never an FAA concern, and should not have been an FAA regulation. It was always an FCC issue because the network design never anticipated one phone at 30,000 feet being able to light up 500 towers at once.
If your ISP was strictly within your state (not all that common any more) the Feds really had no reach anyway.
The solution is to fight hard for municipal broadband.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 3, Informative) by NotSanguine on Monday November 27 2017, @07:16AM (2 children)
That's an interesting point. And would make a whole lot of sense too, except the FTC has no authority to regulate ISPs. That was the purview of the FCC. But the FCC has had that authority stripped from them. And the FTC has not been given the authority to do so. As such, *no one* has that authority.
Here's an article [techcrunch.com] discussing this issue.
And here are a few more just for good measure:
http://thehill.com/blogs/pundits-blog/technology/324520-fcc-ftc-are-playing-a-shell-game-with-online-privacy [thehill.com]
http://adage.com/article/privacy-and-regulation/ftc-regain-isp-privacy-oversight-easy/308487/ [adage.com]
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 3, Informative) by zocalo on Monday November 27 2017, @09:34AM (1 child)
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?
UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @04:18PM
"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. .
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @05:17PM
Anything involving network neutrality automatically becomes a non-issue with a strong decentralised internetworking system. Unlike IPv*.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @09:54PM (1 child)
I hate the repeal of Net Neutrality as well. I do want to point out that this article is oversimplifying and intentionally misportraying the political process, though. Consider the following:
1) Some politicians really think Net Neutrality is a bad thing. Do you really think 100% of politicians all believe any policy is good or bad?
2) Some politicians don't have enough facts to judge, so will do whatever the most persuasive person says. I know 5 years ago, I had no idea of the pros and cons of Net Neutrality, and I'm a technology person. These are busy people and non-technologists.
3) Politics is a give-and-take. Some (maybe most) of these politicians may be pro-Net Neutrality, but may not be willing to go to the proverbial cross for it. When the Republican (or Democratic) Part Whip comes to you and says, "vote this way, and we'll help you get votes for your 'give money to children healthcare bill of 2018.' Vote against us, and the Republican Party is going to support a challenger against you in the 2018 primaries," a LOT of politicians will roll over for all but their most corely-held beliefs.
4) Politicians want to belong, going back to #3 above and getting stuff done, plus just human nature of not being ostracized. Why do police not turn over the "bad apples?" The same reason why Republican and Democrat politicans toe the party line so often.
It's nothing as simple as, "I got a 50k campaign contribution from Verizon, sold!"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday November 27 2017, @11:18PM
You're right, most often they have to do some golf lunches, private jet flights, and fancy dinners. By the end the politicos are "convinced".