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The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections
191–200 of 534 posts
Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections
#192Before 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…
The FTC did regulate ISPs, until they sued AT&T over their "unlimited" claims and lost in appeal. In losing, they actually lost the ability to regulate ISPs at all. AT&T wanted this. Here's the ruling: https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2016/08/29/1...
Seeing this coming, FCC proposed privacy rules around the same time: https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-16-39A1_Rc...
Which did go into effect on January 3rd: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2016/12/02/2016-28...
Among the privacy requirements, there are also mandatory breach notifications.
The industry's response is here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/files/2017/0... . They complained about the breach requirements, and also claimed the difference between them being opt-in for advertising profiling vs Google et al being opt-out violated their First Amendment rights.
A coalition of Internet advertisers filed a similar response: http://ana.net/getfile/24564 . Here, they claim another First Amendment conflict with: "The creation, analysis, and transfer of consumer data for marketing purposes constitutes speech"
So yes, please dig deeper. This is a year-long end to a battle that AT&T successfully opened up in their appeal. It's over; the ISPs won, at the expense of individual American privacy.
Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections
#193Earlier 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…
"forcibly", not "forcefully": http://public.wsu.edu/~brians/errors/forceful.html
Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections
#194Earlier quoted context omitted.
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. Since both sides are astonishingly bad, I usually end up voting third party in races where there is one.
and that's why bills like this pass.
Right. The only way to stop Kang from ruining everything is to vote for Kodos instead.
Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections
#195One 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.
The GOP has survived, and thrived, on fringe issues for generations. In the poli-sci world such tactics are known as wedge issues. The Dems know they exist, but are very poor at the successful execution of them. At the end of the day, the federal government has very little daily impact on most people's lives. In order to get people's interest, one has to elevate fringe issues and create strawmen to get people interested. The GOP has understod this forever.
Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections
#196Is anyone surprised by this? Elected representatives are rich and priveleged with zero connection, understanding or obligation to the people.
The Republicans have a stated policy of helping corporations at the expense of people. The fact that the American public voted them in just proves how stupid most people in this country really are. We deserve this.
Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections
#197This, 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…
"Geeks like to think that they can ignore politics, you can leave politics alone, but politics won't leave you alone." - RMS
Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections
#198Earlier quoted context omitted.
>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.
> Meanwhile, if you see any factual errors on Breitbart, by all means post them.
I liked this one:
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/breitbart-issues-best-co...
Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections
#199Any clarity re: this comment[1], which seems to suggest that things are not as they seem? [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13942989 > In June 2015, the FCC reclassified the ISP's as common carriers. Tada, the FTC rules no longer apply. So the FCC regulated them with roughly the same set of rules. Now they've undone this.
The legislation, if enrolled into law, undoes the future privacy changes. The existing privacy exposure (since 2015) goes on until then regardless.
Implementing this change via legislation also means that changes in these regulations require statute change (not purely by the whim of any President).
Re: The House just voted to wipe out the FCC’s landmark Internet privacy protections
#200Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 m…
Because the truth matters. You're reacting to this based on the politically spun narrative that was fed to you when you first encountered the issue. The truth is actually a fair bit more complex. This is a case of a regulatory agency overstepping its bounds and seizing jurisdiction outside of the domain allowed for it by Congress. That's the language in which the bill is framed, the the way in which it has been discu…
The FTC previously proposed essentially this same rule and was shot down by the courts as not having authority.