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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

#151

Post by mythrwy »

aanm1988 wrote: post #148
mythrwy wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So as it's going to be a flame war apparently I've deleted the comment. I'd just like to register my opinion that I don't see Washington Post is an objective, nor even a trustworthy source at this point. When they print something it's often worth looking deeper into I believe.

> Last time I posted something like this it turned into a bit of a flame war Gee I wonder why.

Ya, so do I. Seriously. We can't have different political opinions without it turning into this?

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

#152

Post by aanm1988 »

pnathan wrote: post #19

This, right here, is the consequence of the withdrawal from politics many geeks advocated very strongly in an earlier time. "Everything is corrupt, it doesn't matter"... turns out to only be a viable philosophy when things mostly work well enough . What we have in protections and freedoms were purchased through a ton of hard work by prior generations: the liberty to slack and think that it just works ok is a nice sid…

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

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

#153

Post by maxerickson »

doctorshady wrote: post #3

It's a bit disappointing to see that aside from a few abstained votes, everybody just chose to vote along party lines. Do these people just rubber stamp a bill because there's a D or an R next to it? Even if it meant more nay votes for the bill, I really wish we had representatives that vote based on critical thought rather than what their friends were doing. I mean, as long as I'm dreaming too, we should give assemb…

The Republicans have a majority. This lets them do things that fit with the ideological center and/or other priorities of their party. So we will have lots of party line votes in the next couple years.

(They could have let the rule go into effect and then drafted legislation to clarify and unify the regulation of internet privacy. This might have been annoying for ISPs. So what.)

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

#154

Post by masonic »

ballenf wrote: post #132
tomohawk wrote: post #114

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…

I'm confused. If these rules that were repealed never went into effect, or only partially, does that mean that our data was already (or is currently) being sold? Does this legislation explicitly condone the collection or sale of browsing data? (I'd still rather have the protection than not, but can't seem to find a good detailed explanation.)

  does that mean that our data was already (or is currently) being sold?
Probably. I doubt that broadband carriers would admit it publicly one way or the other.

They've been able to for at least 1.5 years, and counting.

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

#155

Post by maxerickson »

alistproducer2 wrote: post #133

One aspect of this that is being missed is how well this illustrates the inability of the Democratic party to take advantage of an obviously advantageous situation. It's a no brainer that most people would recoil at the idea of everything they do on the Internet suddenly being for sale. It would be super easy to come up with at least a dozen relatable nefarious use cases and stuff them into TV commercials and ads and…

Realistically it is a fringe issue and people have 18 months to forget about it before there is an election.

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

#156

Post by Aaron1011 »

gwu78 wrote: 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.

> not to mention tamper with

Modifying the SNI hostname in transit is pointless - the client still knows what hostname they sent. Changing the SNI hostname would only cause the server to send back a different certificate, which would immediately be noticed by the client.

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

#157

Post by clubm8 »

thomastjeffery wrote: post #2

Time to start paying the VPN tax.

Unfortunately some popular services (Netflix, Hulu) block VPN traffic. So I've moved a large chunk of my browsing over to Tor, but that makes it an open target for the NSA since they feel they can attack any data passing through links outside the NSA.

Damned if you do, damned if you don't.

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

#158

Post by masonic »

alistproducer2 wrote: post #147
mythrwy wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So as it's going to be a flame war apparently I've deleted the comment. I'd just like to register my opinion that I don't see Washington Post is an objective, nor even a trustworthy source at this point. When they print something it's often worth looking deeper into I believe.

>Although Washington Post isn't quite Brietbart yet they appear to be headed rapidly in that direction from my perspective So you've never actually been to Breitbart then? I checked it regularly before the 2016 elections and, in those days, it certainly earned its nickname "stormfront lite." They've toned it down since the additional scrutiny and subsequent mainstreaming of the Trump era, but WaPo has never been and…

  WaPo has never been and will never even come close to Breitbart.
Well, they certainly weren't close to the Obama administration or Clinton campaign like WaPo was, as clearly revealed in numerous WikiLeaks-exposed email exchanges.

Meanwhile, if you see any factual errors on Breitbart, by all means post them.

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

#159

Post by che_shirecat »

tomohawk wrote: post #114

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…

I don't understand why people like yourself have to try to reframe and deflect attention on everything to fit your political narrative. Why can't you just see the problem for what it is and hold the representatives with your political affiliation accountable? Who really cares who our "traditional" privacy regulator is if neither of them end up able/willing to do the regulating? Why are you trying to frame this as a mistake made by the "previous president" when every single vote cast to repeal the only possible legal barrier to the commoditization of the internet activity of US citizens was cast by house/senate republicans? Are you perhaps suggesting that republicans would be the ones behind pushing a law through congress protecting internet privacy? I cannot comprehend how you can rationalize this (UM ACTUALLY... THIS IS OBAMA'S FAULT!) drivel in your head without some serious cognitive dissonance

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

#160

Post by st3v3r »

esaym wrote: post #97
cmurf wrote: post #57

https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/115-2017/h202 215 yea, 205 nea. All yeas were Republicans.

>> ISP companies also contended that the FCC rules have placed them at a disadvantage with other non-ISP Internet companies that also collect user data, like Netflix or Facebook. I think there is always a flip side and I think this is it. Why can facebook take my data and sell it but for the ISP, my data is treated like a health record? Personally, I don' think anyone should be able to sell my data.

THAT IS NOT A FLIP SIDE. The solution to being upset about one entity being able to sell your data is NOT to let other entities do it too!
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