6 ms·
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 powe
by 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 agoIt 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.
- gojomo 10y agoSome countries have even made such data retention a legal requirement. For example in the UK: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-34715872 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-34715872
- bigbugbag 10y agoThis got lobbyied in European Law about 10 years ago in the mandatory data retention directive ( Directive 2006/24/EC [1]). It got challenged in court for being unconstitutional up to the high instances and got invalidated by the Court of Justice of the European Union for violating fundamental rights in 2014. Some countries have decided to face fines and sanctions to keep data retention in their national law as long as they can but most have promptly killed their local implementation of data retention. [1]: http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:32006L0024 http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX:320... and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive
- JumpCrisscross 10y ago> most [EU countries] have promptly killed their local implementation of data retention Source?
- thr0waway1239 10y ago1. Google/Facebook try a lot of underhanded things to triangulate more information about you (for e.g. with sleazy tactics such as inference based on your friends' data even after you have left FB) 2. The very notion of a lookalike audience (and its unfortunate popularity amongst the growth hacker types) is an immediate giveaway that FB/Goog are never going to take this tracking down even a single notch. 3. Google/Facebook actively encourage you to be always signed in to their networks 4. Google Analytics has more or less ensured that they see a BIG portion of what you do. Besides, just imagine a casual web user jumping from site to site. How many times are they going to land on a site which doesn't use Google Analytics? 5. Android is the dominant phone OS 6. Let us not even get into the infuriatingly patronizing attempt by Facebook to become an ISP in countries like India. Why didn't FB try to pull that stunt in a more developed country? Food for thought! This is a case where pretty much every company is in the wrong. >> People are missing the point on the bill, it isn't just horrible for privacy. However, the overall point you make is true.
- bigbugbag 10y ago>( (...) even after you have left FB) even before you join FB or even if you never join.
- diggan 10y ago> you cannot choose your ISP/broadband provider Wait, what? Never visited the US but I assumed you had the choice of providers, just as most of the rest of the world where internet is available. I see the reason for this to allow ISPs to have infrastructure to collect data setup, so when some organization needs* access to it, it's already there and easily accessible. * for national security or whatever
- pjc50 10y agoThe US tends to have local monopolies; in order to change ISP you need to move house, or maybe state. This is because the national telco monopoly was broken up early into horizontal companies, rather than the "local loop unbundling" system in the UK (and I think other European countries). LLU is a little strange because the lines are still owned by one company, so there's no choice of who does the maintenance and installation work (it's always BT OpenReach in the UK). But you do get a choice of what happens to your packets after they reach the DSLAM.
- bigbugbag 10y agoLLU is a regulation to break existing monopolies and allow some degree of competition to happen because an unhealthy internet impedes the country economy.
- vertex-four 10y ago> Never visited the US but I assumed you had the choice of providers, just as most of the rest of the world where internet is available. Unless you live in a major metro area - where you might, if you're lucky, have two choices of cable provider - there's a reasonable chance you only have a choice between cable, ADSL over some neglected wiring to an exchange a few miles away, and satellite. So if you depend on having fast internet speeds, you're stuck with the one cable provider. Also - it's not particularly uncommon that an apartment block is wired up for a specific provider and unable to get service from any other provider due to a monopoly contract the building owner signed. Then you also have that happening over entire areas in places, just with local Government signing the contract.
- rayiner 10y agoI think nobody should be able to deal in private information, but that's some fine needle splitting there. Due to powerful network effects, I have more choices of ISP than I have choices for social media to keep in touch with my family. (Unless you want to teach all my aunts, uncles, cousins, and my daughter's various grandparents how to use whatever social network doesn't spy on you!) And as for creating value, ISPs invest billions of dollars a year building physical infrastructure. It sure as hell wasn't Google that built fiber to my house.
- drawkbox 10y agoGoogle Fiber may not have built fiber to your house but they definitely pushed competitively to get broadband/ISPs to do more. Cox in Arizona definitely upped their fiber rollout and bandwidth/transfer rates, mainly by using channels/docsis 3 etc because of competition from Google Fiber. I still have no fiber options to my house in a good area. Overall broadband ISPs have failed at gigabit rollout for which they got tons of federal funds to do so. They don't put in enough in profits back into R&D or rollouts unless to an extremely wealthy area. If you truly think broadband/ISPs care whether you have good internet or fiber then my guess is you live in one of the areas that had some competition. Otherwise they sit back on their semi-monopolies and stop innovation in broadband where they can to milk it. They could drop channels on digital tv and use more for internet and slowly have started to do that, but they are drawing it out big time. Their "big innovation" in the last decade was data caps and constantly messing with VPNs and other valid uses of broadband. They only innovate when they have a chance to further their monopoly or stranglehold on an area. I'd say broadband/ISPs, once a bright shining innovative force in the 90s/early 2000s, have gotten lazy and are actively slowing down innovation now [1], and this lobbying to get a competitive advantage over Google/Facebook is a good example of non-innovation but using the system to slow innovators and innovation in broadband/internet services and products. [1] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/12/why-comcast-and-other-cable-isps-arent-selling-you-gigabit-internet/ https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/12/why-c...
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- gremlinsinc 10y agoYou can choose your ISP provider, I'm lucky enough to be with X-mission in utah, the CEO runs a TOR exit node, has given MANY anti-NSA speeches, and is a BIG advocate for privacy and has guaranteed he won't be selling any of our information. And they have 1GIG fiber, so pretty much everything I could possibly want.
- CleaveIt2Beaver 10y agoThat's fantastic for you, but not everyone has the luxury of choice. I'm in PA, and the only option we have here is Comcast. Pretty shitty, being forced to choose the lesser of one evil.
- coldcode 10y agoIt wasn't exactly a party line vote, with 5 more Republicans voting against it would have failed.
- drawkbox 10y agoSenate was party line which was introduced first by Jeff Flake R-AZ, House had a handful flip but for the most part party line.