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

washingtonpost.com

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

#121

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…

[deleted]

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

#122
post #56

This thread may grow long and maybe turn to the topic of HTTPS. SSL with SNI exposes plaintext hostnames/domainnames on the wire for anyone to read, aggregate and sell, not to mention tamper with. It should be an optional extension. For many users it adds no benefit. For some users, it breaks their software and adds needless complexity. Now the privacy advocates have a reason to dislike it too. Just say no to SNI.

If you don't have SNI, then the server's IP address is going to be tied to a specific domain name anyway (unless you do a shared certificate like CloudFlare does, which now makes actual data more vulnerable). A government or telecom company is definitely going to have precisely zero trouble linking IP addresses to domain names absent SNI.

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

#123
post #56

This thread may grow long and maybe turn to the topic of HTTPS. SSL with SNI exposes plaintext hostnames/domainnames on the wire for anyone to read, aggregate and sell, not to mention tamper with. It should be an optional extension. For many users it adds no benefit. For some users, it breaks their software and adds needless complexity. Now the privacy advocates have a reason to dislike it too. Just say no to SNI.

[deleted]

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

#125

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…

You can't just say the regulations are old and therefore invalid because they're old.

Remember, the telephone industry was regulated because telephone companies merged and cooperated to create regional monopolies and destroy competition, all at the expense of consumers. Comcast, Time Warner and the like have all been doing the same.

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

#126

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?

Make it a mark of shame that does real damage to their reelection campaign.

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

#127
Well, they had unlimited bullets and needed just one to hit. We needed to block everyone. But how can people follow a story let alone a lobbying effort with our current ADHD news cycle...

Can someone give people like me a "5 things to fight back" list?

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

#128
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

"Nay" was the pro individual privacy vote.

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

#129

Please share your VPN setups. I would like to have my VPN connection at the router level, if possible. Edit: Here's sort of an answer to my own question https://www.howtogeek.com/221889/connect-your-home-router-to...

Streisand sets up a new server running L2TP/IPsec, OpenConnect, OpenSSH, OpenVPN, Shadowsocks, sslh, Stunnel, a Tor bridge, and WireGuard.

https://github.com/jlund/streisand

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

#130

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…

You can't just say the regulations are old and therefore invalid because they're old. Remember, the telephone industry was regulated because telephone companies merged and cooperated to create regional monopolies and destroy competition, all at the expense of consumers. Comcast, Time Warner and the like have all been doing the same.

You also can't just say that the internet is the same as POTS.

The FCC has scarcely been better than these companies. It has a history of being a revolving door for companies. Consider what RCA/FCC did to Armstrong back in the day.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Howard_Armstrong

Just because the FCC does something doesn't mean its good, legal, or whatever. It's just what 3 of 5 unelected, unaccountable appointees cooked up. When the board changes, they can just as easily uncook it up.

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