Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

washingtonpost.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 534 posts

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

#111

Post by wfo »

SteveNuts wrote: post #59

Not that I'm necessarily OK with either, but what's the difference between this and the myriad of other sites that are collecting your browser habits/search history and selling it? I'm not for this at all vote at all, and I'm not sure why Trump supporters are, I'm just trying to come up with a good argument for why it's worse.

I don't think Trump supporters are actually behind this. It's one of those things he never campaigned on but we're going to get anyway. Plus, it's congress that pushed it. Presumably, if it's unpopular enough he could veto it.

And the reason ISP is much worse is your ISP is your gateway to the internet. Everything you do can be tracked and it's directly tied to your personal identity. You can't avoid being tracked by it by using a different site. Want a list of cat owners in San Fransico? Comcast has that list and they'll sell it to you, names, addresses, etc. How about a list of people who have googled 'given medical condition' in the tri-state area? How about a list of names and addresses of people who are interested in gay sex in Utah? How about who have visited Ashley Madison in Washington, DC?

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

#113

Post by wfo »

esaym wrote: post #101
cmath wrote: post #6

Does anyone have suggestions on staying private that my mom could easily follow?

I'd think not using the ISP's DNS server would be a good start. Either find one somewhere else or run your own.

Does this even help? Are DNS requests encrypted? I had thought that they were not.

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

#114

Post by tomohawk »

Before getting all spun up, I'd dig a little deeper on the issue than what the WaPo does in this piece.

These regulations were only voted on late in 2016 and never went into effect. To do the regulations, the FCC reclassified the internet as basically ye olde telephone system, which then made it subject to their purview based on laws created in the 1930s. This is classic overreach. Congress never gave this authority to the FCC and is acting to put them back in line with the law.

It's pathetic the the WaPo used their platform to create more heat than light on this, by selective quoting. Here's a more full quote from Rep Blackburn that explains her position more fully.

“The FCC already has the ability to oversee privacy with broadband providers,” Blackburn explained. “That is done primarily through Section 222 of the Communications Act, and additional authority is granted through Sections 201 and 202. Now, what they did was to go outside of their bounds and expand that. They did a swipe at the jurisdiction of the Federal Trade Commission, the FTC. They have traditionally been our nation’s primary privacy regulator, and they have done a very good job of it.”

The lesson here really is that if the issue is really important, then get an actual law passed instead of trying to contort regulatory authority based on laws from the 1930s. The previous president could certainly have done this, but chose not to.

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

#115

Post by kelnos »

antisthenes wrote: post #90
callcallcall wrote: post #26

Please do not complain into the echo chamber of comments here. Please take a moment to support the EFF, call your representatives, and speak to friends and family. EFF: https://www.eff.org/ Find your reps: https://tryvoices.com/

If my rep already voted Nay, what else can I realistically do?

Call your Rep's office, and tell them (politely) that, because of votes like this, you will be voting for whomever challenges them in the next election, unless you see your Rep's vote record improve drastically and align with your interests. And then follow through on that.

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

#116

Post by heurist »

vancan1ty wrote: post #80
asimjalis wrote: post #35

Is there another side to this debate or is it really this black and white?

One thing that I think is being ignored and was not mentioned in the article is that the referenced regulations were passed by the FCC near the tail-end of the Obama administration and never actually went into effect. So, strictly speaking, this vote did not change ISP regulations, it just keeps them the same as they have been in the past.

I have no context on this... What were those regulations? The whole argument against this was that ISPs would be able to sell our private browsing history. Anyone know if they can really do that now?

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

#117

Post by niftich »

vancan1ty wrote: post #73

Something that is not mentioned in the article is that the FCC regulations in question were passed in October 2016 and have never gone in to effect. So, to be strictly accurate, the vote does not roll back any regulations which actually ever affected the internet. Sources: http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2017/03/02/fcc-sets-... http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2017/03/28/broadband...

A few posters on the thread [1] for the Senate version's passing have noted [2][3][4] that this is the case, but those points appeared largely lost in the discussion to follow. To quote the comment at [2]:

"This undoes the 73-page publication published on 2016-12-02 by the FCC, most of which took effect 2017-01-03, some parts later on 2017-03-02, both after the election and one of them after the inauguration."

Meanwhile, [4] says:

"This pending rule change is not in effect at all yet; it was only put through 3 weeks after the 2016 election and wouldn't have taken effect until next December."

Not sure if it's [2] or [4] that's wrong about the dates of taking effect, but it's clear that the FCC rule was enacted very late.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13942345 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13943942 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13943458 [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13944790

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

#118

Post by hprotagonist »

bigphishy wrote: post #25
hprotagonist wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

given the fact that deep packet inspection is real, to what extent will this actually help?

Your post clearly enforces my suspicion that comments on hackernews have increasingly become infected with users who do not know of what they speak, and do not clearly think before they type.

That's fine. I am aware that properly configured VPNs are DPI resistant.

I am also aware that they aren't foolproof.

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

#119

Post by CaptSpify »

pcmaffey wrote: post #54

Welp, now there's a real market opportunity for 'open' ISP's. I would gladly pay more to a smaller ISP with slightly higher latency for guaranteed privacy. SpaceX's planned satellite internet will hopefully fill this void for the world... until Elon dies and it's taken over by the evil, ignoramuses of corporate greed.

Most of the US will kill just to have a choice of which ISP they use though.

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

#120

Post by gnaritas »

guelo wrote: post #88
afarrell wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One problem is that legislators need to make decisions on a wide range of domains. This leaves them subject to influence by expert lobbyists and party whips. Critical thought about an issue requires much more time and study than most people have except for their own specialization. I assume you know how to pitch manure, program a computer, and cook a tasty meal. Yet tell me, how long would it take you to butcher a ho…

They're not voting on that many issues. This is their job, they're supposed to study and try to understand the issues. And really, this isn't that hard of an issue, I could probably ask my gramma "should AT&T be able to sell your browsing history to advertisers" and she would say no.

The question you're asking your grandma isn't the issue they're concerned about. The quesiton they're asking themselves is if I go against my party, how is this going to affect my re-election. That's why we have party line votes like this. They don't give two shits about the people they're representing, they only care about maintaining office.
Post reply on HN