US Congress Votes To Shred ISP Privacy Rules (theregister.co.uk) 547
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Register: The U.S. House of Representatives has just approved a "congressional disapproval" vote of privacy rules, which gives your ISP the right to sell your internet history to the highest bidder. The measure passed by 232 votes to 184 along party lines, with one Democrat voting in favor and 14 not voting. This follows the same vote in the Senate last week. Just prior to the vote, a White House spokesman said the president supported the bill, meaning that the decision will soon become law. This approval means that whoever you pay to provide you with internet access -- Comcast, AT&T, Time Warner Cable, etc -- will be able to sell everything they know about your use of the internet to third parties without requiring your approval and without even informing you. That information can be used to build a very detailed picture of who you are: what your political and sexual leanings are; whether you have kids; when you are at home; whether you have any medical conditions; and so on -- a thousand different data points that, if they have sufficient value to companies willing to pay for them, will soon be traded without your knowledge. With over 100 million households online in the United States, that means Congress has just given Big Cable an annual payday of between $35 billion and $70 billion.
Republicans (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Internet Rape (Score:3, Funny)
Only Republicans would rape the Internet. And they got a orangutan in office to rubber stamp it.
Re:Internet Rape (Score:5, Insightful)
Only Republicans would rape the Internet. And they got a orangutan in office to rubber stamp it.
Yes the Republicans have been pushing for this since SOPA, and it was protested about and struck down so they tried renaming it CISPA and that got struck down and now they are pulling this crap. It is not so much about the president but the fact we have Republicans in the house and senate who think they have a blank check to do whatever they want.. I expect they are going to try to make abortion illegal and pull all planned parenthood funding, I imagine they are going to pull all support for climate change research and put as much money into coal and oil drilling and digging and I know for a fact they are going to try to get us embroiled in more wars so that if there is a Democratic resurgence they will be dealing with the fall out from that war so hard that they will not be able to accomplish anything in the 4 or 8 years they have, thereby leaving an open for another republican to get in on the idea that the Democrat guy got nothing done. Same old Republican crap , different day! I have said it before, This is what you get when you vote Republicans into office. Get used to it kids! I learned this a long long time ago.
Blank check? (Score:3)
Face it, we handed them a blank check when we elected Trump. They don't always have the balls to cash it (their first round of billionaire tax cuts in the guise of Health Care failed) but they've got it. In two years time we've got a chance to revoke that check in the
Re:Blank check? (Score:5, Interesting)
Face it the entire US election system was pretty fucked up. In action, you could not tell the difference between Republicans and Democrats, sure they made different noises and ran different PR campaigns to scam the electors but there was no real difference in their profession, as corporate whores and every is for sale.
This of course can be challenged in the court, as it breaks the constitution, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.", just to be clear for idiots, no where in that paragraph is that regulatory constraint limited to action by government. No fucking line in there about by the government, it is across the board. So the law infringes as passed by government as it denies the right of a person to be secure in the papers, papers being communications, that is the law and it is not limited to government ie government can not pass that law to allow some individuals to attack the security of other citizens and their communications.
The Vote Numbers were different than listed (Score:4, Informative)
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/201... [house.gov]
Re: Internet Rape (Score:4, Insightful)
Trump's not perfect, but at least he rejected both parties.
You don't actually believe that, right?
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Not really.
I don't believe 9/11 was an inside job. I do believe many Muslims in America cheered on that day, and many of them were living in New York and New Jersey.
I trust that we did land men on the Moon, returned them to Earth, and could do it again.
The Earth is not, in fact, flat.
The Nazi Holocaust, one of several attempted genocides in human history, did happen. I've met both survivors and liberators.
I believe that Trump ran as a Republican, but was rejected by the GOP leadership and most Republican el
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That's an insult to orangutans. They are gentle peaceful and intelligent creatures.
Re:Internet Rape (Score:5, Funny)
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There are three assertions in those two sentences. The first and the third are directly contradictory.
Re: Republicans (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes. Anyone with more money.
They do believe in a free market, and sell themselves out to the high bidder.
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I hope the Democrats' campaign ads pound home this evil deed during the next round of representative elections. Rub it in!
Re:Who will care? (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, that's right, they can't. Especially as I never use facebook, and don't allow their javascript to execute.
How can my ISP see all my web traffic? Pretty easily, if it's not encrypted, which is one reason why google is pushing https everywhere, and there's a lot of astroturfing here and elsewhere about why this is a bad thing.
Re:Who will care? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, Facebook already sees your other Webtraffic, because it has the ad networks bugged to track you. Google does. All of them do.
You aren't anonymous unless you're on Tor and using Incognito Mode all the time. The internet works by sharing who you are with everyone interested. Or did you think that the price on Amazon is what everyone sees?
If you don't want the government tracking you, go offgrid. Though I hear that is illegal in some places.
Re:Who will care? (Score:5, Insightful)
You can throw up speedbumps to what they can see, and limit the sharing quite a bit. But you can't do that with your ISP, and in a lot of places you have very little choice.
Yeah, actually, I do. Because they tried price discrimination once, and it blew up on them badly. Because people share information as well. Now, if you have evidence they are managing to do this more subtly now, I'd certainly be interested in seeing it.
I see this all-or-nothing bullshit all the time. Is this some sort of trollish astroturf campaign? It certainly doesn't mirror real life.
Re:Who will care? (Score:5, Interesting)
Lets start with Government, unless you're a "frothing at the mouth" Libertarian like me (and from your Post history here, you're not "frothing), you're misunderstanding the use of Hyperbole. Which seems to be all the rage. Hence the over the top REAL LIFE examples or late.
Seems like every day I hear another liberal talking about how RUSSIA HACKED THE ELECTIONS and another Conservative talking about how TERRORISTS KILLED EVERYONE.
What nobody seems to be talking about is how Americans are being spied upon by the dark shadow government and being outed when politically expedient. We all should be terrified by that knowledge.
And once you realize the Government is spying on you, ATT/Verizon spying makes even more sense. Who do you think BigTelCo is spying for?
Again we've already lost the war, this is just mop up stuff to tie any loose ends that might have slipped through. Nothing to see here ... move along.
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How does Facebook and Google see that I binge-play Elder Scrolls Online an entire night? How does my ISP see it?
Do you see the difference? Facebook and Google may see MOST of what you do IN WEB BROWSERS, your ISP will see everything, without question, that passes through your modem.
How can they not know? (Score:3)
How does Facebook and Google see that I binge-play Elder Scrolls Online an entire night?
Because they see your "signal" go dark for the night and you talk about it on some service later that Google can see (i.e. they know now). Or maybe the company that runs Elder Scrolls just told them since there is nothing stoping THEM from selling your info.
Meanwhile if you had played over a VPN your ISP would know nothing. They are literally the only service it's actually possible to keep in the dark, yet you want to m
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Even when the web traffic is encrypted (i.e. "https") your ISP can still see your DNS traffic. As soon as PornHub changes their site layout to use "midgets.pornhub.com", your ISP can sell your specific interests to the highest bidder.
Re:Who will care? (Score:4, Interesting)
The cynic in me says they work for the NSA or ISPs when they do that. (Sure, https can't be cached, requires more CPU, etc. but the technical problems seem more and more like the 640K of RAM issue.)
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I currently run a openvpn server, and think I will now spin one up on digitalocean for 10$ a month, for my family anyways, this stuff just makes me sick and tired.
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How can my ISP see all my web traffic? Pretty easily, if it's not encrypted, which is one reason why google [sic] is pushing https everywhere...
Got to hide your massive search history for Japanese Tentacle Porn...
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"Doesn't affect me directly, screw everyone else!"
Love the attitude.
Re:Who will care? (Score:4, Interesting)
Whether Facebook, with 2.8 billion users, should be somehow regulated is a different question than whether the ISP should be able to listen in on my internet traffic.
They don't (didn't?) let the phone company listen in; why is the ISP different?
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"Is there anything they won't rape for money?"
I'm assuming that question was rhetorical.
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Females.
This Old Transparent House (Score:2)
Democrats (Score:2, Troll)
Yes, Republicans will allow individuals to sign contracts that allow ISP's to rape their privacy - believing that people should pretty much be able to do what they want as long as they are willing to pay the consequences.
Democrats on the hand, want everyone except for the rich to be able to avoid all negative consequences -- afterall they can always find someone other than themselves to blame, and democrats are sure happy to rape anyone except the poor or illegals for anything that makes them feel good. Th
Re:Democrats (Score:5, Insightful)
Right. If you don't like it, just sign a contract with another ISP. Oh wait! There is no other ISP!.
Yes, people should be left to do what they want, so long as we know exactly what they're doing at all times. Watch which websites you visti - it's going into your file.
You are a fool if you think the Republicans are some freedom-loving outfit. The Democrats certainly have their issues as well, but this is really beyond the pale...
Re:Democrats (Score:5, Insightful)
This is fsking ridiculous, and only a Trump-supporter type person would put forth such a warped, bullshit comment.
Democrats do not, in any way shape or form, want to keep people from negative consequences.
Re:Republicans (Score:5, Insightful)
We need to face it. Capitalism, while good in theory, is working out particularly badly for people now because the corporations and the oligarchs running them have taken over the media and the government and are hell bent on squeezing workers to the breaking point. The mainstream media is wholly owned by giant corporations and they pump out fake news, corporate-friendly propaganda 24/7. Capitalism needs to be saved from itself The money addicted oligarchs need to be reigned in. People need to get a better deal. New Deal 2.0.
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The money addicted oligarchs need to be reigned in.
I agree with you, but it ain't gonna happen.
Short-sighted asymptotic greed has shoved America aside.
The Golden Calf is here and God has left the fucking building.
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Is there anything they won't rape for money?
No, there's nothing they won't do in pursuit of a dollar or to curry favor with corporations.
Why are Republicans so hateful? This is a blatant slap in the face to every person that uses the internet, and yet they were all salivating to get this passed. Their constituent are supposed to be the ones who hate the gubmint and all of its surveillance tools, but did any of them object to this? Not that I heard.
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Can you back that up with some examples?
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Re:Democrats (Score:5, Insightful)
Bush put in Patriot, Obama campaigned on repealing it, and made it actually worse. Spying on Americans is now okay, because even though we've caught them red handed a number of different times, nobody is trying to stop them because "TERRORISTS!!!!!" .
If you vote for either of the two major parties, I hope you like your tyranny, for there is almost no functional difference on the major issues.
Re:Democrats (Score:5, Insightful)
We had a Republican president when the Patriot act was passed to take away all our rights. But to be fair, the Democrats certainly deserve a fair share of the blame. It's not just one party doing it.
However, keep in mind that in reality, President Obama never met an invasive secret domestic spying program he didn't like. As well, he was exceptionally vicious in pursuing heavy criminal penalties for whistle blowers. I find it difficult to believe he was seriously interested in repealing the Patriot Act, except for "public relations" with his constituency of Democrats like me.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
You said,
The summary said,
Yes, it's one party doing it. First they changed the rules via the FCC, and now they've made it permanent. It's the very definition of "one party doing it".
Re:Democrats (Score:5, Insightful)
I assume you're referring to all the anti-terrorism Snowden shit, that started under W. but continued under Obama (and six years of GOP-controlled Congress). And damn-well ain't gonna let up any under Trump.
But let's put it in context. The GOP, after years of screaming and gnashing of teeth, when the chips were finally down could NOT get enough of their own shit together to repeal Obamacare, that thing they say they hate more than anything in the whole world. But, just a few days later, these same guys managed to put their differences aside to crush a tiny consumer-protection rule for Internet users.
That's who we're dealing with here, people. Still insist that Dems are the worst? Ancient history, get over it. Out of the frying pan, into the fire, and shit it's only been 12 weeks!
but on the other hand, doesn't Ivanka's clothing line just look spanky!
Re: (Score:3)
don't forget that that Ajit Pai was put on the commission by Obama.
Yes, but details, son! Commissions like the FCC are required to have members from both parties. while the chair position may be chosen by the President. Obama installed Pai because he had to. Wikipedia [wikipedia.org]: "He was initially nominated for a Republican Party position on the commission by President Barack Obama at the recommendation of Mitch McConnell. He was confirmed unanimously by the United States Senate on May 7, 2012, and was sworn in on May 14, 2012, for a five-year term."
He's a grandstanding tool (and former lawyer for Verizon through his old firm).
Sadly, this is quite true. Fox
This is absolutely sickening... (Score:5, Insightful)
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While I don't approve of this outcome at all, the browsing habits of the wealthy are up for sale just like the rest.
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But now anyone can buy the personal details about the rest of us. Things we might rather keep private.
Re:This is absolutely sickening... (Score:5, Insightful)
"In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread." -- Anatole France
Mart
Re:This is absolutely sickening... (Score:5, Insightful)
Not "we". It's the dummies. If we had an educated populace, it wouldn't be happening. The obscenely wealthy wouldn't have the votes.
Re:This is absolutely sickening... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:This is absolutely sickening... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is the result of the 'user pays' mentality that seems to have the US in its grip. Something that even a lot of fairly well educated people adhere to, because they're in a good position and they really don't care what happens to anyone else. This is extremely short-sighted behaviour
Free (or at least affordable) health care and education are not communist plots, they're a necessity to ensure you have an educated and healthy population that is able to resist power grabs from the wealthy, such as the one happening (has already happened) in the US. Anywhere where neo-liberalists are preaching austerity and 'user pays', the same pattern can be seen.
If you don't give a damn about someone else's fate, eventually you'll live in a society where people will no longer give a damn about your fate either.
Selective Outrage (Score:2)
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Uh, the rules never went into effect (Score:2, Troll)
Hey moron, ISPs have been able to sell your anonymized data since forever. How have you been hurt by this?
Oh, and those rules never went into effect. Doh!
Re:This is absolutely sickening... (Score:5, Informative)
your Internet access might become cheaper.
Pffthahahahaha, oh wait you were serious, let me laugh even harder. HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
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You are retarded.
The rules would have afforded netizens with the opportunty to SUE if a company isn't disclosing what data they're copying. With these rules being tossed out, there is simply no legal recourse when an ISP (or yes, Google) steals your data.
This is not giving more freedom to businesses, but it is contributing to a further regression of our privacy.
Also, there's a big difference: You can use (or not use) whatever search engine you like but in MANY parts of the country there is only one real IS
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If you try to spin any harder, I fear your head will launch into orbit.
Re:This is absolutely sickening... (Score:5, Insightful)
What are you talking about? This will allow ISPs to fund Internet access for poorer people.
You're not losing any privacy, but your Internet access might become cheaper.
Those fuckers will use this as an excuse to jack up your rates again because now they need to offset the costs of having farm your data for them to sell. You see, this is going to cost them and therefore will cost the consumer. That's ISP math.
So... Can they sell past history? (Score:2, Interesting)
Or is there a date at which point than can begin collecting your soul (I mean data) and selling it?
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I see you've bought the outrage of the day bait. Two minutes hate, if you will.
Anyway, the ISPs could always sell your data. There has never been an enforced law or regulation that stopped them, like any internet company, from selling the data you willingly give them or which passes across their networks.
Some regulations were put into place last year (but never enforced, mind you) that would have prevented ISPs from selling certain data about you. Note that other internet companies, like Facebook, Google, e
Ouch... (Score:4, Interesting)
This idea that all senators and reps are terrible - except mine has got to go. We are all continually being bent over. Vote all of them out.
Re:Ouch... (Score:5, Informative)
Was there lube? I didn't feel any lube.
This idea that all senators and reps are terrible - except mine has got to go. We are all continually being bent over. Vote all of them out.
Ugh. Vote the Republicans out, dum dum! Can you not see that the Democrats voted against this abomination? This "one side is as bad as the other" bullshit is what got Trump elected in the first place.
Re:Ouch... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Ouch... (Score:5, Interesting)
This "one side is as bad as the other" bullshit is what got Trump elected in the first place.
I would like to take this moment to remind everyone that there is this thing called a primary election. During the primary election, you can vote for who you want to see in the general election. Traditionally, primary elections have low turnout, so your vote will have more influence.
Even if you don't identify with a political party, vote in the primary. I even suggest voting in the primary of the party you identify with the least. Perhaps that would result in some moderate candidates in the general election.
Re:Ouch... (Score:5, Insightful)
Um, yes, since this was a regulation that the Democrats passed when they were in power just a few months ago that the Republicans are now repealing, it's pretty hard to claim this is a non-partisan issue. The Democrats didn't have to pass the rule in the first place (and don't claim it was a trap to make the Republicans look bad: the Democrats were overconfident of their victory and the rule was passed before the election).
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No Democratic senators, and one Democratic representative who I can't find information on. Whoever that is needs to get smacked the hell down.
But it's not "a few Democrats", it's one idiot.
Re:Ouch... (Score:5, Informative)
The drone thing again, eh? Obama's drone strikes killed 117 civilians [newsweek.com] over 8 years. Trump's drone strikes killed 200 civilians [independent.co.uk] in one day this month. And if you're going to bring up killing kids, don't forget the 8 year-old American girl [nbcnews.com] Trump killed.
Nice Panopticum they are building (Score:2)
With the records ISPs will be building on people, any kind of profiling will become easy. Have had an impure thought? Your ISP will know!
IMO, that must the the actual reason behind this anti-citizen action.
Re: Nice Panopticum they are building (Score:3, Insightful)
If ever a Hitler gains power, it will make it easy to round up the Jews (or whoever the next lot of scapegoats are). Thr census will also become irrelevant. Simply gain access to this data.
Re: (Score:3)
Have had an impure thought? Your ISP will know!
True, but much more likely people will be flagged on suspicion of copyright violations. They could perhaps sell impure thoughts to extortionists, if they can find some who will pay, but ISP's can make more money selling out your efforts to download that unlicensed copy of that Disney movie. Some nice arrangement between the MPAA, the RIAA, and a consortium of ISP's willingly providing their data about you for the noble cause of fighting piracy (the evil-looking eagle says "Piracy is not a Victimless Crime"
Nothing new here (Score:2, Informative)
Nothing new here... ISPs used to be able to do this, until an Obama-era regulation blocked it in October, 2016. This just returns us to the prior status. See here [arstechnica.com]
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Oh look at that. It's questionable whether any had even implemented it yet.
Re:Nothing new here (Score:5, Informative)
Common carrier rules could be abolished, and regulation of ISPs could be moved back to the FTC, but that would take time and have other negative consequences.
So.. tired... (Score:2)
For Sale To The NSA, FBI, DEA, and your local PD (Score:5, Insightful)
If your records are for sale to anybody, no warrants will be required for any government agency to purchase them.
For all their empty talk of "freedom", the Republican party sure seems to love authoritarian rule.
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Now that our web traffic can make them money... (Score:5, Funny)
...how many more Mbps can I get? Hey, Comcast, are you listening? The quicker I surf, the more info you get, so how about ramping up those speeds.
There might be a... (Score:2)
Sweet. (Score:2)
Thank You, Sir. May I have Another?
In Soviet America (Score:4, Funny)
Teh internets watch you.
So just consider VPN service (Score:3, Insightful)
is now basically a requirement in America.
You will be better off in the end. Protect yourself from your ISP and get the added bonus of protection from the RIAA/MPAA etc as well. Like a two for one deal.
Re: So just consider VPN service (Score:2, Insightful)
The VPN provider can sell it too.
Re: (Score:3)
Kind of breaks their whole business model though.
So what? Nothing really has changed... (Score:3)
Who follows the rules now? How many of you actually have read the TOS for your ISP? It's privacy policy?
Unless you know what's going on to start with and have taken extreme measures to avoid it, you are already being tracked every which way from Sunday. So your ISP now can packet sniff your traffic? Big woop...
If you care to keep your ISP in the dark, best you arrange to have a VPN connection 100% of the time for all your traffic. But I would expect that you are constantly ditching your browser cookies, never log in to anything, don't use E-mail or any protocol that is unencrypted now...
The ONLY compliant anybody has here is that your ISP keeping these records might make it easier for law enforcement to get this information. Even so, that will take a warrant, unless you ISP just gives up any information they have to law enforcement when they ask, even if they don't say please...
Re: (Score:2)
Opera Browser (Score:3)
As Slashdot's resident and probably only Opera Browser user, I'd just like to remind ya'll that the browser has built-in out of the box support for VPN access. There is no complicated or confusing setups. It just works. And remember, Opera Browser is also based on Chrome/Chromium nowadays, so the rendering engine and interface is essentially the same as Chrome otherwise. Additionally, Ad-block is also built in, instead of requiring ad-ons.
Details: http://www.opera.com/computer/... [opera.com]
Shred ISP Privacy Rules... (Score:4, Insightful)
From what I understand the privacy rules set forth by the FCC under president Obama haven't gone into effect yet. So I'm not sure what's changed from what we have today. Granted, it's a crap thing to do, but ISP's have had the ability to do this for as long as they've existed as far as I know.
Hasn't Google and Facebook been monetizing their users in a similar way? And would have been able to continue to do so even if the privacy rules were left in place? If my ISP is going to make money off of me, I should at least get a discount on my monthly bill though. That's the biggest difference I can see. I actually pay my ISP, where I use Google for free.
The Brietbart take, whee. (Score:4)
From the headline of an article that came up in a Google Search, which I will not link to nor did I click:
"House Votes Tuesday to Restore Consistent Online Privacy Regulation"
Fuck tolerance, those people just need to be driven off the goddamn internet. It's too good for them to ruin.
exemptions? (Score:5, Insightful)
Random URL fetch script anyone? (Score:2)
How about a script that fetches a random URL once per second?
Putting junk into the data makes it hard to get anything useful out of it. That plus some use of VPNs.
VPN anyone (Score:2)
Re: Go dark (Score:2)
NSA or CIA can beat that. How long do you think it will be before they partner with ISPS for "enhanced security" and pay them with that technology?
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Hey dufus, those guys already have access. That is not who this story is about. This is about anybody with money being able to buy your private internet history.
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You can do that but are you then safe from Microsoft or Apple taking whatever they want from your computer and phoning it home?
No. And if you trust Microsoft to stop spying when you make use of the user-facing privacy options, you are indeed a trusting person.
What the ISP knows about you is much less than what Microsoft knows about you.
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Re:...suck it (Score:4, Insightful)
Some people might be offended when you tell them to suck it.
Trump voters do tend to be snowflakes that way. They bitch and moan about political correctness, but heaven forbid someone insult them or their dear leader, lest their poor little feelings get hurt.
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What is this 'regulation' you speak of? (and how long is that gonna last...)
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