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The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections

washingtonpost.com

251–260 of 534 posts

Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections

#251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can keep using clever witticisms like that if it makes you feel better, and meanwhile bills like this will keep passing along party lines.

So it's the fault of people who vote third party that you have a two-party state?

It's sensible to ask whether a specific 3rd-party vote had a chance of affecting the outcome in a positive way. E.g., one of the more effective arguments against the current Green party in the US is they don't seem to try very hard in local elections, where they might stand a chance; but they always run someone for president who stands no chance. If we have a hope of getting out of this, it's going to start on school boards and city councils. Prop up your 3rd parties there, but vote the lesser of two evils when it's the most effective thing to do.

Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections

#252
post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always interpreted that resignation as "both sides are terrible, so I'm going to keep voting for my side". I wonder how many people really felt strong enough about politics to claim both sides are equally bad and then decided not to vote on that basis alone.

That attitude is true to a point, but surely people don't think that Gore would have invaded Iraq? That difference alone strikes me as so obvious and tangible, that there's no excuse for these kinds of false equivalences anymore.

He also would have kept us in Kyoto, which may have been even more consequential. I voted Nader in a blue state and regret it. Voting third party without IRV is naivety.

Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections

#253
post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The votes in both the house and the senate were almost entirely along party lines. Every republican in the senate that voted, voted for this act and every democrat in the senate that voted, voted against this act.

The reality is more nuanced--the time to stop this legislation was by preventing it coming to vote in the senate. Typically the senate needs 60 votes to forcefully end debate[0], then merely majority to pass it. Once can disguise support for a bill by approving to end debate, then voting "Nay" given it will get the necessary 50 to be approved. For JS 34 [1] Mitch McConnell (R, KY) limited debate to 10 minutes--I'm un…

> requested the role be called

roll

Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections

#254
post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And break the connection. Mission accomplished.

The ISP owns the transit of traffic between the client and the server. If they want to block people from accessing certain places they can just block it at the ip layer with packet filtering. Why would they go through all this rigmarole with mangling SNI data?

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Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections

#255
post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The IP layer already exposes the IP addresses they are contacting, and you can use reverse DNS or passive DNS to get the domain name. SNI doesn't even make things easier, because extracting that from traffic requires DPI and TCP sessionization.

You assume that DNS is being used. What if the user already has the IP address and knows the hostname? SNI makes gettng the hostnames easier than if they were encrypted as they are without SNI.

> What if the user already has the IP address and knows the hostname?

Then the ISP just does a reverse DNS lookup, which can be implemented a bunch of different ways, it's not particularly difficult.

> SNI makes getting the hostnames easier

Getting the hostname from SNI requires TCP sessionization and at least some form of DPI. Getting the hostname my way just requires single-packet inspection with a reverse DNS lookup. If anything, my way is easier.

Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections

#256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So it's the fault of people who vote third party that you have a two-party state?

It's sensible to ask whether a specific 3rd-party vote had a chance of affecting the outcome in a positive way. E.g., one of the more effective arguments against the current Green party in the US is they don't seem to try very hard in local elections, where they might stand a chance; but they always run someone for president who stands no chance. If we have a hope of getting out of this, it's going to start on school…

And it's this kind of impetus that creates voter apathy. If you insist on trying to shove square pegs into a round or triangular hole, you're just going to end up with vote tallies similar to the one you just saw with the national election.

As someone who didn't vote, no, I would not have changed my decision given the outcome, and this "lesser of two evils" justification crap is exactly why. Enjoy your shitty country.

Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections

#257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, this is a consequence of the republicans being in power.

The Democrats also have policies that are... poor, particularly around the internet. This is a cross-party problem.

Given this vote was split along party lines this smells of whataboutism.

Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections

#258
post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"forcibly", not "forcefully": http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/forceful.html

People don't seem to like this comment, but that is a great link. Browsing around the site, I found this list of common English language errors: http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/errors.html Really interesting. Thanks for sharing.

Most of those are made up prescriptive guidelines, mixed in with some common misspellings. One grumpy person does not get to decide how the rest of us choose to use and evolve language. The "forceful" / "forcible" example is particularly inane and pedantic but hardly the worst on that page. I'll continue to say "being that", "ice tea", "center around", etc. as I please.

In linguistics the illustrative analogy is that prescriptivism is akin to an anthropologist entering into a foreign culture and rather than simply observing, they instruct the members of this culture on how to cook, dress, cut their hair, etc. Most modern dictionaries (including the Oxford English dictionary) take a descriptive approach to the study of language.

Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections

#259

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Democrats also have policies that are... poor, particularly around the internet. This is a cross-party problem.

Given this vote was split along party lines this smells of whataboutism.

Whataboutism is irrelevant. What matters is whether his assertion is true: are both parties' policies toward the Internet a problem?
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