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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

#451

Post by VikingCoder »

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…

> get an actual law passed ... the previous president could certainly have done this, but chose not to.

Right, the Republican Congress was very happy to work the prior President on sensible legislation.

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

#452

Post by wu-ikkyu »

nemacol wrote: post #443
benevol wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Withdrawal from politics certainly is an important factor that has made America a currently sinking ship. But the problem is more systemic. It's at the center of the culture of this society: it's the fact that MONEY (== DOMINATION) has been made the most central and culturally venerated value. To change that, a lot of suffering will have to occur, because those who benefit from MONEY (== DOMINATION) will use exactly…

I would argue that the withdrawal is the core problem and the money is the symptom of that problem. Same with gerrymandering, election systems, distribution of power, and other key talking points. Active and rational political conversations would, in my mind, have mitigated a lot of the problems with money in politics. Gerrymandering would not be (as large as) a problem if the masses had not been asleep at the wheel.…

>I would argue that the withdrawal is the core problem and the money is the symptom of that problem.

Upon what do you base this hypothesis? Because history shows otherwise. The oligarchy/aristocracy has always had disproportionate influence in the US. It has always been an uphill fight for the average citizen.

>I believe the British government forms the best model the world ever produced, and such has been its progress in the minds of the many, that this truth gradually gains ground. This government has for its object public strength and individual security. It is said with us to be unattainable. All communities divide themselves into the few and the many. The first are the rich and well born, the other the mass of the people. The voice of the people has been said to be the voice of God; and however generally this maxim has been quoted and believed, it is not true in fact. The people are turbulent and changing; they seldom judge or determine right. Give therefore to the first class a distinct, permanent share in the government. They will check the unsteadiness of the second, and as they cannot receive any advantage by a change, they therefore will ever maintain good government.

-Alexander Hamilton, Farrand's Records of the Federal Convention, v. 1, p. 299.1787-06-19

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

#453

Post by acdha »

acdha wrote: post #318
Jach wrote: post #83

Maybe someone at YC could reach out to Thiel who could convince Trump to veto? Something like that is probably the only realistic chance of this failing, and I have no idea how much Thiel personally cares about this issue anyway.

A presidential veto is a big deal, especially going against his own party whose support will be critical for getting anything done (or staving off those pesky ethics investigations). I don't think Thiel has that kind of juice. Maybe Bannon does but it really seems like this would have to be an issue he cares deeply about personally, and it's hard to think of one where there's much space between the president and the…

I should have added last night that those are the pragmatic reasons why I don't think that's likely. The stronger argument is that Thiel's most likely reaction is going to be expanding Palantir's data sources or investing in more data mining companies.

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

#454

Post by finid »

evoloution wrote: post #442
finid wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To paraphrase A. Einstein?, When intelligent people refuse to participate in politics, they'll be governed by the less intelligent members of society. That's apparent in the US where elections results are influenced more by those with barely a high school education than by their more educated fellow citizens. The most important qualification one needs to have, it seems, to be elected to the Texas Education Agency, is…

Off-topic: Always better to quote the earliest reference. Plato said practically the same think around 347BC. Maybe there was someone before him too when we had no written texts. History repeats itself.

I can only quote a known source. Though I won't be surprised if Einstein made that statement after reading Plato's.

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

#455

Post by andrewla »

matthew-wegner wrote: post #192
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…

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 eff…

Thanks for posting this -- very informative!

That decision seems insanely broad; there's nothing in there that prevents AT&T from buying a breakfast cereal company and selling corn flakes that claim each 1 pound box contains 80 pounds of cereal and will make you live forever.

At the same time, it doesn't seem to apply to ISP broadly; only ISPs that qualify as common carriers. Although the definition of common carrier seems overly broad itself, according to [1], even pointing out that Disney is a common carrier because their roller coasters in their theme parks carry passengers [2].

Has any attempt been made to amend either the FTC acts or the FCC acts to clarify the extent to which entities are classified as common carriers only as regards to those activities which meet the definition?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier

[2] Gomez v. Superior Court (Walt Disney Co.) (2005) 35 C4th 1125, http://online.ceb.com/calcases/C4/35C4t1125.htm

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

#456

Post by BearGoesChirp »

abritinthebay wrote: post #257
pnathan wrote: post #210

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.

We cannot toss out 8 years of history by the results of two votes in Congress.

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

#457

Post by Kryptor »

_alias wrote: post #224
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…

This whole discussion is disheartening. When I first heard about this is came to HN to get the facts and try to actually form an opinion, because honestly I can't figure out what the bill is supposed to change and how. Instead I find people pontificating along party lines like every comments section across the internet. Where's the analysis and insight? Where's the objectivity? I've come to expect more from this site…

The text of the resolution is very short, it simply says the FCC rule is repealed. You can read the rule here:

https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2016/12/02/2016-28...

At 73 pages, it's a doozy. I don't know exactly what the effects would have been, but one important thing to note that I did not see mentioned once in any of the reporting about this is that the rule has only been in effect for 84 days. So I wouldn't expect any changes to be too noticeable.

Also worth noting is that whatever restrictions on ISPs are removed by this, it doesn't guarantee that ISPs will start doing that thing immediately, if at all. I also haven't seen reporting on what past behavior ISPs have already engaged in that this rule would have stopped.

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

#458

Post by pythonaut_16 »

chrisper wrote: post #248
alistproducer2 wrote: post #16

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...

But where would your VPN go to? It would have to be outside of the US, I assume. That means slower speeds and higher latencies.

It doesn't have to be outside the US to avoid your ISP selling the data.

If you run through a 3rd party VPN you have to trust the provider to not sell your information.

If you run through a US based datacenter your data is still within reach of a subpoena but your ISP won't have access to it.

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

#459

Post by andrewla »

niftich wrote: post #117
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." Meanwh…

There's the actual Federal Register notes regarding the new policies [1]. Here it notes:

> DATES: Effective January 3, 2017, except for §§ 64.2003, 64.2004, 64.2006, and 64.2011(b)

The complete list of sections that are specified in the rule change (last couple of pages):

  64.2001 Basis and purpose.
  64.2002 Definitions.
  64.2003 Notice requirements for telecommunications carriers.
  64.2004 Customer approval.
  64.2005 Data security.
  64.2006 Data breach notification.
  64.2010 Business customer exemption for provision of telecommunications services other than BIAS.
  64.2011 BIAS offers conditioned on waiver of privacy rights.
  64.2012 Effect on State law.
64.2011 is further broken down; section (a) says (effectively) that you can't offer financial incentives for the customer to waive (b).

So it went into effect, but only the parts of it that were basically definitional in nature, and some places specifying where the regulations do not apply. So in a realistic sense, the regulations never went into effect.

[1] https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2016-12-02/pdf/2016-28006.p...

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

#460

Post by andrewla »

matthew-wegner wrote: post #192
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…

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 eff…

Also, from a closer look at the Federal Register, it does not appear that the regulations went into effect in any meaningful way -- the sections excluded from that effective data are _all_ of the relevant regulations.

See my comment below https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13986192

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