11 ms·

You can’t buy Congress’s web history – that's not how any of this works

162 points by gojomo 10y ago

avmich 10y ago
Of course you can buy a non-identifying information perfectly legal. And then guess what's the definition of non-identifying information? Think again. If ISP thinks it sells you that, nothing stops you to look at that yourself closely - and may be, just may be you'll uncover something which ISP missed. After all, scrubbing data to be perfectly non-identifying could be, you know, expensive. And doesn't exactly fit ISPs business model. So sharing even Congress-related history could be an interesting thing.
- thinkling 10y ago
  Buy aggregate browsing history for users in DC and nearby area codes. Look for browsing of .gov websites that are effectively government intranet tools. Correlate with access to RNC sites, Infowars, FoxNews, etc. While I'm sure you would both miss people and have some false positives, you'll likely also identify many members of congress and their staff.
  - hackinthebochs 10y ago
    Google searches have the query in the URL... probably most "important" people google themselves occasionally.
    - tedunangst 10y ago
      Why are important people searching google without https?
      - daenney 10y ago
        Important doesn't equal or imply smart nor being good at what you do.
      - AnkhMorporkian 10y ago
        They aren't. Google upgrades to HTTPS automatically, and the old method of overriding the DNS to an unsecured Google server stopped working years ago. Same with Bing, Yahoo, DDG, etc. No SSL, no search in today's world.
      - hexadec0079 10y ago
        HTTPS will not protect the URL of the request, just the contents though.
        temprature 10y ago
        This is wrong. The domain name is revealed through SNI but the path of the URL is sent as part of the encrypted HTTP request.
        UncleMeat 10y ago
        HTTPS protects URL parameters. That stuff doesn't go to the DNS request.
- pfranz 10y ago
  You're right. My guess is most "anonymized" data is lazy--stripping out obvious identifying information. There are quite a few cases where you can pinpoint users from correlating to publicly available data. CGPGrey posted a video today showing a layman's example with Social Security Numbers[1]. One cool thing I heard Apple talk about[2] was injecting noise or subsampling to help mask individuals. Although, I don't see that mentioned in their public page on privacy[3] or their whitepaper[4]. [1] https://youtu.be/Erp8IAUouus https://youtu.be/Erp8IAUouus [2] https://www.wired.com/2016/06/apples-differential-privacy-collecting-data/ https://www.wired.com/2016/06/apples-differential-privacy-co... [3] http://www.apple.com/privacy/approach-to-privacy/ http://www.apple.com/privacy/approach-to-privacy/ [4] http://images.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf http://images.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf
lph 10y ago
Prohibiting the sale of individually identifiable information is a very weak protection. It's alarming how quickly multiple dimensions of "anonymized" data can be used to zero in on any target person, and it won't take long for amoral opportunists to start selling de-anonymized data to the highest bidder. See also k-anonymity.
- pfranz 10y ago
  Look no further than the news in Congress last week. Devin Nunes' claim is that he saw conversations where names were masked, but it was obvious who they were about. When doing this procedurally, it's amazing how few data points are needed to pinpoint a specific person.
- gorbachev 10y ago
  Combine the data with publicly available information about politicians and other public figures, feed it to a machine learning algorithm and I bet you could get very high accuracy results very, very quickly.
drawkbox 10y ago
People are missing the point on the bill, it isn't just horrible for privacy. Really this is a jab at net neutrality, the open selling of data by ISPs is a power grab away from the FCC that helped to make net neutrality a thing by labeling broadband/ISPs as common carriers. Republicans (this was a party line vote) say it is unfair that Google and Facebook have your personal information and use it for ads but why can't ISPs have that and also sell it? One big major reason is people sign up to Google and Facebook for the purpose of sharing and agree to their ads in exchange for a service. Google built the most powerful search engine and Facebook built the social graph. Google/Facebook built value and they only use your info to target ads to you, they don't sell it because others would do the same. They sell ads and people use them because they have info on you, not necessarily to sell off to others. If you ask me it is unfair for republicans to legally allow ISPs to do the same because we expect privacy from ISPs in ways we do not from Google and Facebook. You can choose not to use Google or Facebook but you cannot choose your ISP/broadband provider. In my opinion this is like letting someone view your mail, read it and then sell information about you. It is also an unfair competitive advantage for ISPs above all because they can place ads on any website if they want or track you across all sites not just like Google/Facebook which are huge but only see a portion of what you do. ISPs built no value product like a search engine or social graph for this purpose, they should do that if they want access like Google and Facebook. It seems almost like the GOP are harming innovative companies and rewarding/catching up non-innovators. I bet broadband companies/ISPs won't even use the profits to improve broadband and rollout gigabit service for real. It is a rewarding of lazy semi-monopolies over innovative companies and products. Republicans also control the FTC not the FCC so they want all control to fall to the FTC instead. It is both a power grab and a bending over of all their constituents. Most of all, it is also another step in dismantling net neutrality as FCC protected that by categorizing the broadband/ISPs as a common carriers and they want to sap the FCCs power in that regard.
- JumpCrisscross 10y ago
  It also gives ISPs the cover, funding and motivation to archive customers' browsing data en masse. The value of these data will be huge for both domestic and foreign intelligence.
mirimir 10y ago
> In the meantime, the two biggest campaigns have collectively raised nearly $140,000 for the purchase of web histories that will never go up for sale. It’s anyone’s guess where the money will end up. Well, NSA staff did LOVEINT. Maybe some ISP staff will want to profit. Edit: But I wonder how it'd be possible without self-pwning.
elchief 10y ago
Didn't Netflix pull their 2nd competition because people figured out how to de-anonymize all the anonymized data? Can you not figure out who someone is by repetitive filtering?
rdlecler1 10y ago
>you want to get really clever, the Wiretap Act also makes it illegal to divulge the contents of electronic communications without the parties’ consent, which arguably includes browsing history. So wouldn't it be illegal for sites to sell visitor information (email lists)?
rtx 10y ago
Discrimating between companies leads to communism. Good opportunity for isps to gain market share by offering privacy protection.
- mirimir 10y ago
  Those are called VPNs.
- kirrent 10y ago
  You mean people will get the opportunity to pay their ISP not to sell them out? Sounds pretty consumer friendly to me.
  - iamjeff 10y ago
    Any way we see this new development, this weakening of privacy is a big win for telecoms and its sustained and vast efforts at lobbying Congress. Bluntly, Congress sold out the American people...anywhere else (I believe) and the ability for entire industries to buy votes would be called corruption, especially when elected representatives remove consumer protections (whoever gave them that mandate?!) in favour of (a paying) industry. [0]- The 265 members of Congress who sold you out to ISPs, and how much it cost to buy them (http://www.theverge.com/2017/3/29/15100620/congress-fcc-isp-web-browsing-privacy-fire-sale http://www.theverge.com/2017/3/29/15100620/congress-fcc-isp-...)
    - narrowrail 10y ago
      You know, it is possible that these members didn't vote because of some quid pro quo relationship but because of ideological beliefs that aligned with voting this way. Maximizing liberty and 'leveling the playing field' (WRT FANG) seem like beliefs one could reasonably hold. The end doesn't justify the means to all people, and reaching decisions one doesn't like is sometimes the outcome of remaining true to one's principles.
  - rtx 10y ago
    No ISPs will get opportunity to differentiate themselves.
DannyBee 10y ago
"and they every major network has robust safeguards in place to prevent you from working back to a single person’s web history." hahaha. THat's quite a talking point. What would these "Robust safeguards" be? The history of pretty much every study on this, ever, is that it's pretty easy to deaggregate and deanonymize data. But look i'm sure, verizon, at&t, etc, those great bastions of "doing it right", have done this right too! 20 bucks says if someone buys large amounts of the aggregated data, they can extract significant information that can be pinpointed to individual congresspeople.
- derefr 10y ago
  The safeguards might just be that they won't sell you "large amounts of" the aggregated data unless you're clearly a profit-driven multinational corporation rather than a ideologically-driven individual. KYC and all that.
  - beefield 10y ago
    That will be an interesting lawsuit to follow whether you are allowed to be discriminated against because of not being a profit-driven multinational corporation.
    - matt4077 10y ago
      No, it won't and yes, you are, respectively and unfortunately.
  - MaulingMonkey 10y ago
    Because ideologically-driven individuals don't work for profit-driven multinational corporations? Because they're never hacked by ideologically-driven individuals? That kind of safeguard to me sounds like the worst of both worlds: Not meaningfully safeguarding anything, and lost business. A "clearly profit-driven multinational corporation" will (practically by definition) care about the latter.
  - ckastner 10y ago
    What about a profit-driven multinational corporation with political ties? Say it is indeed possible to pinpoint individual congresspeople, as the grandparent suggested. If some of these congresspeople have a browsing history they'd rather not have made public, identifying them could leave them open to blackmail.
DannyBee 10y ago
"and they every major network has robust safeguards in place to prevent you from working back to a single person’s web history." hahaha. THat's quite a talking point. What would these completely unmentioned "robust safeguards" be? The history of pretty much every study on this, ever, is that it's not all that difficult to deaggregate and deanonymize data unless people are amazingly good at being careful what they give, and even then, it assumes you can't combine it with other data. But look i'm sure, verizon, at&t, etc, those great bastions of "doing it right", have done this right too! 20 bucks says if someone buys large amounts of the aggregated data, they can extract significant information that can be pinpointed to individual congresspeople.
maaaats 10y ago
> You can’t buy Congress’s web history They probably don't understand or know that, though, so why not give them a scare?
- backpropaganda 10y ago
  Right. Only us smart HNers living in SV know anything about tech.
  - maaaats 10y ago
    That's a stupid straw man.
gyger 10y ago
One should check out the talk of 33c3, where a group of german journalists bought this type of data and deanonymized some users. https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8034-build_your_own_nsa https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8034-build_your_own_nsa
- rndgermandude 10y ago
  tl;dw Even worse, they found stuff like links to a police detective's application for a search warrant in the "anonymized" data. Oh, and of course they found and deanonymized some German politicians and their staff. So while it might not be possible to deanonymize and "expose" all of Congress, if you really tried and got some money to actually buy the data, you will be able to at least deanonymize some of your targets, especially if the data originates from a man-in-the-middle like an ISP and not just some random ad network/tracker.
ohthehugemanate 10y ago
I don't see this as a particular obstacle. Yes, I can't buy Paul Ryan's data individually. But I can buy anonymized browsing and demographic data for the downtown DC zip codes, and de-anonymization is not particularly hard when you have so much information to work with. Zip code, gender, and birth date together are enough to get you to 87%.
downandout 10y ago
This controversy seems overblown to me. It would have been nice if these rules had gone into effect as scheduled, but let's remember that they never actually did. So nothing has been lost - ISP's have gained no new abilities, despite how the extremely biased media coverage I have seen of this paints the situation. They have been able to sell aggregated targeting data forever, and will be able to continue doing so. This article is actually somewhat encouraging, in that it displays the limits of the laws as they exist today and will apparently remain. You cannot go buy the browsing histories of specific individuals - enemies, employees, etc. Many of the ridiculous "sky is falling" leaps of fact and logic that have been portrayed in the media to get views (ironically so that they can make money from displaying targeted advertising on articles decrying it) have been disproved by this article.
- tzs 10y ago
  You make it sound like the FCC privacy rules were bringing something totally new to the table. That's not really correct. They were more bringing back something that had recently been lost. Until mid 2016 ISP privacy abuses could be dealt with through the FTC, basically the same as privacy abuses at most other internet businesses are dealt with. In mid 2016 a court ruled that the FTC did not have authority to deal with these issues for common carriers, which ISPs had been since being reclassified as part of the 2015 net neutrality rules. The result was a significant loosening of privacy regulation for ISPs. The FCC rules would have undid that loosening.
  - orthecreedence 10y ago
    Thanks for explaining this. I didn't know the full chain of events nor the FTC's involvement and how it affected the 2016 FCC rules. This makes it much more clear.
- bigbugbag 10y ago
  > You cannot go buy the browsing histories of specific individuals - enemies, employees, etc. You could buy pretty detailed documentation, including internet usage history, from IRC bots on the shadier shades of the doxxing market 15 years ago. Not everybody's would be readily available or as detailed but if you could afford it you go for on-demand doxxing, the more detailed and the more high profile target the more expensive. Among the data extraction methods used, one was gaining remote access to target's computer, collect the data collected, curate it and sell it. So yes it was possible to buy browsing history of specific individuals 15 years ago, so I would be surprised if it wasn't still possible today. Don't ask me where to look, I haven't gravitated under these shades since 15 years ago.
makomk 10y ago
Also, people were talking about buying Congress's search history, which of course ISPs don't even have - only Google does and their ability to sell it was not in any way affected by this rule that covered only ISPs.
- bigbugbag 10y ago
  Those people are confused, at least for searchinternethistory.com the plan is to buy internet history and make it public and searchable. Then again, I'm pretty sure google does not know about what people search on bing or yahoo, and it seems to me that what you search on google appears in the URL so your ISP would know.
  - couchand 10y ago
    > what you search on google appears in the URL so your ISP would know. Well no, Google searches go over HTTPS, so everything but the host is encrypted.
    - bigbugbag 10y ago
      Thank you for fixing my shameful mistake, don't know what I was thinking there. my bad!
  - bigbugbag 10y ago
    Too late to edit so I'm replying to myself because I made a mistake here. Google search has enabled https following the snowden revelations so the ISP is only able to tell one has been to google search website at a specific time but not what one has searched.
ryan_j_naughton 10y ago
This raises an interesting question: who is the ISP for congress? My guess is the government itself, but anyone have anything more specific on that?
- ryan_j_naughton 10y ago
  Using the history of congress editing wikipedia pages I found the answer -- they are their own ISP: http://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-143-228-0-0-1/pft http://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-143-228-0-0-1/pft http://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-143-231-0-0-1/pft http://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-143-231-0-0-1/pft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Congressional_staffer_edits#United_States_House_of_Representatives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Congressional_staffe... https://www.whoismyisp.org/ip/143.228.255.255 https://www.whoismyisp.org/ip/143.228.255.255
  - ryan_j_naughton 10y ago
    This led me to an idea: why not buy online ads targeted by IP address at the IP ranges of congress? It would be extremely targeted since it would only be seen by computers on the hill.
bigbugbag 10y ago
It was my understanding that there would be some deaggregating and deanonymizing to be done on the data. Hasn't this been shown repeatedly that it is not only feasible but also quite easy ? It seems to me that the verge missed the point here.
mumpy 10y ago
> that's not how any of this works (theverge.com) While the publicity pieces may be poorly stated, (in particular one should never use the word "individual" in any context) the desired teachable moment is based on buying data or access to a segment of at least 500 individuals based on factors like travel habits, income and demographics. (In some proposals that segment could be as high as 5-10K as I see mention of congressional aids and the like.) That desire could be quite easy to achieve and quite hard to block without upsetting the intended market for ISP data since being able to buy affects on segments down to such granularity is exactly how the market works.
AdamSC1 10y ago
This article fails to take into account that time and time again we've seen that 'anonyimized aggregate data' is never truly anonymous. In the AOL anonimized data leak there were plenty of individuals identified: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/technology/09aol.html http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/technology/09aol.html MIT researchers also showed that four anonymous purchases are enough metadata to identify 90% of individuals: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/536501/data-sets-not-so-anonymous/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/536501/data-sets-not-so-a... And, a personal favorite of mine where researchers from Standford and Princeton are reporting at the World Wide Web Conference this April: "Researchers found that they could identify the person behind an 'anonymized' data set 70% of the time just by comparing their browsing data to [often public] social media activities" https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170123/08125136548/one-more-time-with-feeling-anonymized-user-data-not-really-anonymous.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170123/08125136548/one-m... It would not be hard to buy a zipcode worth of data and compare it to known facts about a person until you de-anonymized it.
- jt2190 10y ago
  While I agree with the sentiment that companies have a poor track record of protecting personal data, I'd like to clarify that a "zip code of data" is not anonymized intentionally, which is what makes picking out individuals so easy. There is a technique of intentionally anonymizing data [1] that I learned about because that Apple was talking it up in relation to storing health information. I'm only a layman, but my understanding is that it makes it much, much harder to do an analysis like you describe. [1] The term is Differential Privacy. Here's a tutorial video (1 hour, 34 mins): https://youtu.be/ekIL65D0R3o https://youtu.be/ekIL65D0R3o
  - A_Crazy_Idea 10y ago
    So you learned about an technique. That's nice. I'm flying a kite with two strings. Certainly big data firms use 3.
  - AdamSC1 10y ago
    The zip code was intentionally not anonymized because it was seen as acceptable to release, and that is part of the issue of anonymized data. US Zip codes serve around 7,500 per code on average (US Census 2010) which is different than common wealth postal codes like in Canada where they serve an average of 19 households (25 - 75 people). But, zip data can be interchanged with plenty of other unique identifiers on the web. Maybe it is browser language setting, or version of java etc. Think of it like an Excel spread sheet, if in column A you can have options "1" or "2" then in a list of 100 people there will be at least 50 who share the same data footprint. If you keep adding columns from B onward with the same logic eventually you'll have pretty unique strings. Things like searching history or web history are even worse. Ever done a search for a pizza place near your address, or Google map directions from your home to another location? That identifies you pretty easily. So does connecting to your works website, and the school your kid attends. Web browsing data is nearly impossible to anonymize by its nature unless it was compiled to something like "XX% of users in Zip XXXXXX visited website.com" As for differential privacy, it is a nice emerging theory, but there are challenges with it as there is a significant trade off right now in terms of data accuracy when applying differential privacy. It is primarily effective at casting doubt on if variable "A" about user "B" in a data set is true or not, but if you don't have a specific target or specific metric then enough of the data is true that it could still in theory be deanonymized, and since most of the anonymity is based on incorrect variables in a data-set, all it would take to reverse engineer it is a large enough data-set and a few known variables. I hope people like Apple continue to champion the advancement of differential privacy though - it is a major step in the right direction. But, being able to buy browsing history, even in aggregate does not protect individuals.
notacoward 10y ago
If the data can be used to target ads at individuals, then it clearly isn't anonymous in any meaningful sense of the word.
alistproducer2 10y ago
So I was a call-in on NPR yesterday(http://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2017/03/29/internet-privacy-cong... http://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2017/03/29/internet-privacy-cong...) that discussed the ISP privacy issue. I brought up the cried fund and all of the guests immediately jumped to the defense of the data seeking companies saying how these companies were too reputable to "allow" such a thing to happen. I'm finding all of this love for these previously unknown companies very strange.
- thirdsun 10y ago
  Your link is incomplete. I think you meant to link to http://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2017/03/29/internet-privacy-congress http://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2017/03/29/internet-privacy-cong...
- narrowrail 10y ago
  I'm still trying to figure out what, "the cried fund" is exactly, but I just DL'd the 22MB mp3 and will listen. Direct mp3 link for anyone else: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/traffic.megaphone.fm/BUR5331889753.mp3 https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/traffic.megaphone.fm/BU...
cameldrv 10y ago
For those that say this is impossible, take a look at these slides from Dstillery, a major demand side advertising company: https://www.matroid.com/scaledml/2017/claudia.pdf https://www.matroid.com/scaledml/2017/claudia.pdf Pay particular attention to slide #23, and also the following few slides, which shows the architecture of their data processing stack. They are deanonymizing most of what people do on the web, and they undoubtedly have a file on most all members of Congress. Part of the input to this model is the "anonymized" location data that mobile phone companies sell. If you already know where a person lives and works though, or simply have a few retail transactions with timestamps, you can deanonymize these location traces.
pcarolan 10y ago
Lotta speculation in the news for something that could be answered by looking at the data. Since this isn't a new program, has anyone seen it? (please no speculation)

162 points by gojomo 10y ago

Of course you can buy a non-identifying information perfectly legal. And then guess what's the definition of non-identifying information? Think again. If ISP thinks it sells you that, nothing stops you to look at that yourself closely - and may be, just may be you'll uncover something which ISP missed. After all, scrubbing data to be perfectly non-identifying could be, you know, expensive. And doesn't exactly fit ISPs business model. So sharing even Congress-related history could be an interesting thing.

thinkling 10y ago
Buy aggregate browsing history for users in DC and nearby area codes. Look for browsing of .gov websites that are effectively government intranet tools. Correlate with access to RNC sites, Infowars, FoxNews, etc. While I'm sure you would both miss people and have some false positives, you'll likely also identify many members of congress and their staff.
- hackinthebochs 10y ago
  Google searches have the query in the URL... probably most "important" people google themselves occasionally.
  - tedunangst 10y ago
    Why are important people searching google without https?
    - daenney 10y ago
      Important doesn't equal or imply smart nor being good at what you do.
    - AnkhMorporkian 10y ago
      They aren't. Google upgrades to HTTPS automatically, and the old method of overriding the DNS to an unsecured Google server stopped working years ago. Same with Bing, Yahoo, DDG, etc. No SSL, no search in today's world.
    - hexadec0079 10y ago
      HTTPS will not protect the URL of the request, just the contents though.
      - temprature 10y ago
        This is wrong. The domain name is revealed through SNI but the path of the URL is sent as part of the encrypted HTTP request.
      - UncleMeat 10y ago
        HTTPS protects URL parameters. That stuff doesn't go to the DNS request.
pfranz 10y ago
You're right. My guess is most "anonymized" data is lazy--stripping out obvious identifying information. There are quite a few cases where you can pinpoint users from correlating to publicly available data. CGPGrey posted a video today showing a layman's example with Social Security Numbers[1]. One cool thing I heard Apple talk about[2] was injecting noise or subsampling to help mask individuals. Although, I don't see that mentioned in their public page on privacy[3] or their whitepaper[4]. [1] https://youtu.be/Erp8IAUouus https://youtu.be/Erp8IAUouus [2] https://www.wired.com/2016/06/apples-differential-privacy-collecting-data/ https://www.wired.com/2016/06/apples-differential-privacy-co... [3] http://www.apple.com/privacy/approach-to-privacy/ http://www.apple.com/privacy/approach-to-privacy/ [4] http://images.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf http://images.apple.com/business/docs/iOS_Security_Guide.pdf

lph 10y ago

Prohibiting the sale of individually identifiable information is a very weak protection. It's alarming how quickly multiple dimensions of "anonymized" data can be used to zero in on any target person, and it won't take long for amoral opportunists to start selling de-anonymized data to the highest bidder. See also k-anonymity.

pfranz 10y ago
Look no further than the news in Congress last week. Devin Nunes' claim is that he saw conversations where names were masked, but it was obvious who they were about. When doing this procedurally, it's amazing how few data points are needed to pinpoint a specific person.
gorbachev 10y ago
Combine the data with publicly available information about politicians and other public figures, feed it to a machine learning algorithm and I bet you could get very high accuracy results very, very quickly.

drawkbox 10y ago

People are missing the point on the bill, it isn't just horrible for privacy. Really this is a jab at net neutrality, the open selling of data by ISPs is a power grab away from the FCC that helped to make net neutrality a thing by labeling broadband/ISPs as common carriers. Republicans (this was a party line vote) say it is unfair that Google and Facebook have your personal information and use it for ads but why can't ISPs have that and also sell it? One big major reason is people sign up to Google and Facebook for the purpose of sharing and agree to their ads in exchange for a service. Google built the most powerful search engine and Facebook built the social graph. Google/Facebook built value and they only use your info to target ads to you, they don't sell it because others would do the same. They sell ads and people use them because they have info on you, not necessarily to sell off to others. If you ask me it is unfair for republicans to legally allow ISPs to do the same because we expect privacy from ISPs in ways we do not from Google and Facebook. You can choose not to use Google or Facebook but you cannot choose your ISP/broadband provider. In my opinion this is like letting someone view your mail, read it and then sell information about you. It is also an unfair competitive advantage for ISPs above all because they can place ads on any website if they want or track you across all sites not just like Google/Facebook which are huge but only see a portion of what you do. ISPs built no value product like a search engine or social graph for this purpose, they should do that if they want access like Google and Facebook. It seems almost like the GOP are harming innovative companies and rewarding/catching up non-innovators. I bet broadband companies/ISPs won't even use the profits to improve broadband and rollout gigabit service for real. It is a rewarding of lazy semi-monopolies over innovative companies and products. Republicans also control the FTC not the FCC so they want all control to fall to the FTC instead. It is both a power grab and a bending over of all their constituents. Most of all, it is also another step in dismantling net neutrality as FCC protected that by categorizing the broadband/ISPs as a common carriers and they want to sap the FCCs power in that regard.

JumpCrisscross 10y ago
It also gives ISPs the cover, funding and motivation to archive customers' browsing data en masse. The value of these data will be huge for both domestic and foreign intelligence.

mirimir 10y ago

> In the meantime, the two biggest campaigns have collectively raised nearly $140,000 for the purchase of web histories that will never go up for sale. It’s anyone’s guess where the money will end up. Well, NSA staff did LOVEINT. Maybe some ISP staff will want to profit. Edit: But I wonder how it'd be possible without self-pwning.

elchief 10y ago

Didn't Netflix pull their 2nd competition because people figured out how to de-anonymize all the anonymized data? Can you not figure out who someone is by repetitive filtering?

rdlecler1 10y ago

>you want to get really clever, the Wiretap Act also makes it illegal to divulge the contents of electronic communications without the parties’ consent, which arguably includes browsing history. So wouldn't it be illegal for sites to sell visitor information (email lists)?

rtx 10y ago

Discrimating between companies leads to communism. Good opportunity for isps to gain market share by offering privacy protection.

mirimir 10y ago
Those are called VPNs.
kirrent 10y ago
You mean people will get the opportunity to pay their ISP not to sell them out? Sounds pretty consumer friendly to me.
- iamjeff 10y ago
  Any way we see this new development, this weakening of privacy is a big win for telecoms and its sustained and vast efforts at lobbying Congress. Bluntly, Congress sold out the American people...anywhere else (I believe) and the ability for entire industries to buy votes would be called corruption, especially when elected representatives remove consumer protections (whoever gave them that mandate?!) in favour of (a paying) industry. [0]- The 265 members of Congress who sold you out to ISPs, and how much it cost to buy them (http://www.theverge.com/2017/3/29/15100620/congress-fcc-isp-web-browsing-privacy-fire-sale http://www.theverge.com/2017/3/29/15100620/congress-fcc-isp-...)
  - narrowrail 10y ago
    You know, it is possible that these members didn't vote because of some quid pro quo relationship but because of ideological beliefs that aligned with voting this way. Maximizing liberty and 'leveling the playing field' (WRT FANG) seem like beliefs one could reasonably hold. The end doesn't justify the means to all people, and reaching decisions one doesn't like is sometimes the outcome of remaining true to one's principles.
- rtx 10y ago
  No ISPs will get opportunity to differentiate themselves.

DannyBee 10y ago

"and they every major network has robust safeguards in place to prevent you from working back to a single person’s web history." hahaha. THat's quite a talking point. What would these "Robust safeguards" be? The history of pretty much every study on this, ever, is that it's pretty easy to deaggregate and deanonymize data. But look i'm sure, verizon, at&t, etc, those great bastions of "doing it right", have done this right too! 20 bucks says if someone buys large amounts of the aggregated data, they can extract significant information that can be pinpointed to individual congresspeople.

derefr 10y ago
The safeguards might just be that they won't sell you "large amounts of" the aggregated data unless you're clearly a profit-driven multinational corporation rather than a ideologically-driven individual. KYC and all that.
- beefield 10y ago
  That will be an interesting lawsuit to follow whether you are allowed to be discriminated against because of not being a profit-driven multinational corporation.
  - matt4077 10y ago
    No, it won't and yes, you are, respectively and unfortunately.
- MaulingMonkey 10y ago
  Because ideologically-driven individuals don't work for profit-driven multinational corporations? Because they're never hacked by ideologically-driven individuals? That kind of safeguard to me sounds like the worst of both worlds: Not meaningfully safeguarding anything, and lost business. A "clearly profit-driven multinational corporation" will (practically by definition) care about the latter.
- ckastner 10y ago
  What about a profit-driven multinational corporation with political ties? Say it is indeed possible to pinpoint individual congresspeople, as the grandparent suggested. If some of these congresspeople have a browsing history they'd rather not have made public, identifying them could leave them open to blackmail.

DannyBee 10y ago

"and they every major network has robust safeguards in place to prevent you from working back to a single person’s web history." hahaha. THat's quite a talking point. What would these completely unmentioned "robust safeguards" be? The history of pretty much every study on this, ever, is that it's not all that difficult to deaggregate and deanonymize data unless people are amazingly good at being careful what they give, and even then, it assumes you can't combine it with other data. But look i'm sure, verizon, at&t, etc, those great bastions of "doing it right", have done this right too! 20 bucks says if someone buys large amounts of the aggregated data, they can extract significant information that can be pinpointed to individual congresspeople.

maaaats 10y ago

> You can’t buy Congress’s web history They probably don't understand or know that, though, so why not give them a scare?

backpropaganda 10y ago
Right. Only us smart HNers living in SV know anything about tech.
- maaaats 10y ago
  That's a stupid straw man.

gyger 10y ago

One should check out the talk of 33c3, where a group of german journalists bought this type of data and deanonymized some users. https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8034-build_your_own_nsa https://media.ccc.de/v/33c3-8034-build_your_own_nsa

rndgermandude 10y ago
tl;dw Even worse, they found stuff like links to a police detective's application for a search warrant in the "anonymized" data. Oh, and of course they found and deanonymized some German politicians and their staff. So while it might not be possible to deanonymize and "expose" all of Congress, if you really tried and got some money to actually buy the data, you will be able to at least deanonymize some of your targets, especially if the data originates from a man-in-the-middle like an ISP and not just some random ad network/tracker.

ohthehugemanate 10y ago

I don't see this as a particular obstacle. Yes, I can't buy Paul Ryan's data individually. But I can buy anonymized browsing and demographic data for the downtown DC zip codes, and de-anonymization is not particularly hard when you have so much information to work with. Zip code, gender, and birth date together are enough to get you to 87%.

downandout 10y ago

This controversy seems overblown to me. It would have been nice if these rules had gone into effect as scheduled, but let's remember that they never actually did. So nothing has been lost - ISP's have gained no new abilities, despite how the extremely biased media coverage I have seen of this paints the situation. They have been able to sell aggregated targeting data forever, and will be able to continue doing so. This article is actually somewhat encouraging, in that it displays the limits of the laws as they exist today and will apparently remain. You cannot go buy the browsing histories of specific individuals - enemies, employees, etc. Many of the ridiculous "sky is falling" leaps of fact and logic that have been portrayed in the media to get views (ironically so that they can make money from displaying targeted advertising on articles decrying it) have been disproved by this article.

tzs 10y ago
You make it sound like the FCC privacy rules were bringing something totally new to the table. That's not really correct. They were more bringing back something that had recently been lost. Until mid 2016 ISP privacy abuses could be dealt with through the FTC, basically the same as privacy abuses at most other internet businesses are dealt with. In mid 2016 a court ruled that the FTC did not have authority to deal with these issues for common carriers, which ISPs had been since being reclassified as part of the 2015 net neutrality rules. The result was a significant loosening of privacy regulation for ISPs. The FCC rules would have undid that loosening.
- orthecreedence 10y ago
  Thanks for explaining this. I didn't know the full chain of events nor the FTC's involvement and how it affected the 2016 FCC rules. This makes it much more clear.
bigbugbag 10y ago
> You cannot go buy the browsing histories of specific individuals - enemies, employees, etc. You could buy pretty detailed documentation, including internet usage history, from IRC bots on the shadier shades of the doxxing market 15 years ago. Not everybody's would be readily available or as detailed but if you could afford it you go for on-demand doxxing, the more detailed and the more high profile target the more expensive. Among the data extraction methods used, one was gaining remote access to target's computer, collect the data collected, curate it and sell it. So yes it was possible to buy browsing history of specific individuals 15 years ago, so I would be surprised if it wasn't still possible today. Don't ask me where to look, I haven't gravitated under these shades since 15 years ago.

makomk 10y ago

Also, people were talking about buying Congress's search history, which of course ISPs don't even have - only Google does and their ability to sell it was not in any way affected by this rule that covered only ISPs.

bigbugbag 10y ago
Those people are confused, at least for searchinternethistory.com the plan is to buy internet history and make it public and searchable. Then again, I'm pretty sure google does not know about what people search on bing or yahoo, and it seems to me that what you search on google appears in the URL so your ISP would know.
- couchand 10y ago
  > what you search on google appears in the URL so your ISP would know. Well no, Google searches go over HTTPS, so everything but the host is encrypted.
  - bigbugbag 10y ago
    Thank you for fixing my shameful mistake, don't know what I was thinking there. my bad!
- bigbugbag 10y ago
  Too late to edit so I'm replying to myself because I made a mistake here. Google search has enabled https following the snowden revelations so the ISP is only able to tell one has been to google search website at a specific time but not what one has searched.

ryan_j_naughton 10y ago

This raises an interesting question: who is the ISP for congress? My guess is the government itself, but anyone have anything more specific on that?

ryan_j_naughton 10y ago
Using the history of congress editing wikipedia pages I found the answer -- they are their own ISP: http://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-143-228-0-0-1/pft http://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-143-228-0-0-1/pft http://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-143-231-0-0-1/pft http://whois.arin.net/rest/net/NET-143-231-0-0-1/pft https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Congressional_staffer_edits#United_States_House_of_Representatives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Congressional_staffe... https://www.whoismyisp.org/ip/143.228.255.255 https://www.whoismyisp.org/ip/143.228.255.255
- ryan_j_naughton 10y ago
  This led me to an idea: why not buy online ads targeted by IP address at the IP ranges of congress? It would be extremely targeted since it would only be seen by computers on the hill.

bigbugbag 10y ago

It was my understanding that there would be some deaggregating and deanonymizing to be done on the data. Hasn't this been shown repeatedly that it is not only feasible but also quite easy ? It seems to me that the verge missed the point here.

mumpy 10y ago

> that's not how any of this works (theverge.com) While the publicity pieces may be poorly stated, (in particular one should never use the word "individual" in any context) the desired teachable moment is based on buying data or access to a segment of at least 500 individuals based on factors like travel habits, income and demographics. (In some proposals that segment could be as high as 5-10K as I see mention of congressional aids and the like.) That desire could be quite easy to achieve and quite hard to block without upsetting the intended market for ISP data since being able to buy affects on segments down to such granularity is exactly how the market works.

AdamSC1 10y ago

This article fails to take into account that time and time again we've seen that 'anonyimized aggregate data' is never truly anonymous. In the AOL anonimized data leak there were plenty of individuals identified: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/technology/09aol.html http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/09/technology/09aol.html MIT researchers also showed that four anonymous purchases are enough metadata to identify 90% of individuals: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/536501/data-sets-not-so-anonymous/ https://www.technologyreview.com/s/536501/data-sets-not-so-a... And, a personal favorite of mine where researchers from Standford and Princeton are reporting at the World Wide Web Conference this April: "Researchers found that they could identify the person behind an 'anonymized' data set 70% of the time just by comparing their browsing data to [often public] social media activities" https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170123/08125136548/one-more-time-with-feeling-anonymized-user-data-not-really-anonymous.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170123/08125136548/one-m... It would not be hard to buy a zipcode worth of data and compare it to known facts about a person until you de-anonymized it.

jt2190 10y ago
While I agree with the sentiment that companies have a poor track record of protecting personal data, I'd like to clarify that a "zip code of data" is not anonymized intentionally, which is what makes picking out individuals so easy. There is a technique of intentionally anonymizing data [1] that I learned about because that Apple was talking it up in relation to storing health information. I'm only a layman, but my understanding is that it makes it much, much harder to do an analysis like you describe. [1] The term is Differential Privacy. Here's a tutorial video (1 hour, 34 mins): https://youtu.be/ekIL65D0R3o https://youtu.be/ekIL65D0R3o
- A_Crazy_Idea 10y ago
  So you learned about an technique. That's nice. I'm flying a kite with two strings. Certainly big data firms use 3.
- AdamSC1 10y ago
  The zip code was intentionally not anonymized because it was seen as acceptable to release, and that is part of the issue of anonymized data. US Zip codes serve around 7,500 per code on average (US Census 2010) which is different than common wealth postal codes like in Canada where they serve an average of 19 households (25 - 75 people). But, zip data can be interchanged with plenty of other unique identifiers on the web. Maybe it is browser language setting, or version of java etc. Think of it like an Excel spread sheet, if in column A you can have options "1" or "2" then in a list of 100 people there will be at least 50 who share the same data footprint. If you keep adding columns from B onward with the same logic eventually you'll have pretty unique strings. Things like searching history or web history are even worse. Ever done a search for a pizza place near your address, or Google map directions from your home to another location? That identifies you pretty easily. So does connecting to your works website, and the school your kid attends. Web browsing data is nearly impossible to anonymize by its nature unless it was compiled to something like "XX% of users in Zip XXXXXX visited website.com" As for differential privacy, it is a nice emerging theory, but there are challenges with it as there is a significant trade off right now in terms of data accuracy when applying differential privacy. It is primarily effective at casting doubt on if variable "A" about user "B" in a data set is true or not, but if you don't have a specific target or specific metric then enough of the data is true that it could still in theory be deanonymized, and since most of the anonymity is based on incorrect variables in a data-set, all it would take to reverse engineer it is a large enough data-set and a few known variables. I hope people like Apple continue to champion the advancement of differential privacy though - it is a major step in the right direction. But, being able to buy browsing history, even in aggregate does not protect individuals.

notacoward 10y ago

If the data can be used to target ads at individuals, then it clearly isn't anonymous in any meaningful sense of the word.

alistproducer2 10y ago

So I was a call-in on NPR yesterday(http://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2017/03/29/internet-privacy-cong... http://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2017/03/29/internet-privacy-cong...) that discussed the ISP privacy issue. I brought up the cried fund and all of the guests immediately jumped to the defense of the data seeking companies saying how these companies were too reputable to "allow" such a thing to happen. I'm finding all of this love for these previously unknown companies very strange.

thirdsun 10y ago
Your link is incomplete. I think you meant to link to http://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2017/03/29/internet-privacy-congress http://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2017/03/29/internet-privacy-cong...
narrowrail 10y ago
I'm still trying to figure out what, "the cried fund" is exactly, but I just DL'd the 22MB mp3 and will listen. Direct mp3 link for anyone else: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/traffic.megaphone.fm/BUR5331889753.mp3 https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/traffic.megaphone.fm/BU...

cameldrv 10y ago

For those that say this is impossible, take a look at these slides from Dstillery, a major demand side advertising company: https://www.matroid.com/scaledml/2017/claudia.pdf https://www.matroid.com/scaledml/2017/claudia.pdf Pay particular attention to slide #23, and also the following few slides, which shows the architecture of their data processing stack. They are deanonymizing most of what people do on the web, and they undoubtedly have a file on most all members of Congress. Part of the input to this model is the "anonymized" location data that mobile phone companies sell. If you already know where a person lives and works though, or simply have a few retail transactions with timestamps, you can deanonymize these location traces.

pcarolan 10y ago

Lotta speculation in the news for something that could be answered by looking at the data. Since this isn't a new program, has anyone seen it? (please no speculation)