3 ms·

It seems to me that my internet connection is the same as a telephone connection. The telephone company cannot listen in on my calls to see if I mention "aspiri

It seems to me that my internet connection is the same as a telephone connection. The telephone company cannot listen in on my calls to see if I mention "aspirin" then try to sell me aspirin. The same should go for my internet connection. The content should be completely private, including the metadata such as browsing history.

paulcole 10y ago
> It seems to me that my internet connection is the same as a telephone connection You're definitely free to see it this way, but so far (for the most part) the people in power definitely don't agree.
- narrowrail 10y ago
  I think this whole thing is being driven by Verizon and AT&T being jealous of FB, GOOG, and AMZN. The NASDAQ is setting records and these execs think they can get it on it (or appear to) and see the same results without customer backlash.
0xfeba 10y ago
IIRC, that is the difference that a common carrier designation would make.
alasdair_ 10y ago
Even with that analogy, the telephone company can see which numbers you dial, and when. It can make inferences based on that. Did you call an escort service at night and an STD clinic in the morning? Do you regularly call televangelist donation hotline numbers? Do you get a lot of calls from recruiters? The phone company knows all of that stuff - it's one of the issues with the NSA's collection of "just metadata".
- wmf 10y ago
  This is one reason phone companies are regulated; are they allowed to make such inferences? Are they allowed to do anything with such inferences?
  - GauntletWizard 10y ago
    The answers should be yes and yes, for simple reasons - It's utterly unenforcible otherwise, and corporations need a significant amount of those inferences for normal operation. People in town A are calling people in town B a lot? Maybe they need a direct line or to upgrade their infrastructure to handle it. Obviously, there's caveats; but for the most part those should be covered by other antidiscrimination laws, not telecom specific legislation. Telling that you call your rabbi once a week might give them clear signal that you're jewish, but they should be prevented from discriminating against you because you're jewish, and that should be enough reason to prevent them from fishing through their records to see who's a jew.
    - bb88 10y ago
      > It's utterly unenforcible otherwise... and > ...but they should be prevented from discriminating against you because you're jewish You can't have it both ways. Either a business can be regulated or it can't. And why does it have to be the business itself only must be prevented from discrimination? It's certainly possible for a single employee to send likely names of Jews to hate groups, even if the business doesn't condone his behavior.
      - GauntletWizard 10y ago
        I'll admit; I am trying to have it both ways. The way I see it is - These things are very, very hard to find and prosecute. Therefore, we should spend the time finding and prosecuting only the most egregious offenses - And accept that since we'll never prosecute more minor offenses, they might as well be legal.
        bb88 10y ago
        Or, you can just make the data private by default and assume any violations are by default "irregular". We do this already with health care providers, attorneys, crediting agencies, banks, etc.
    - mattnewton 10y ago
oh_sigh 10y ago
Isn't that still the case? I thought this bill would only let ISPs sell aggregated anonymized data. Something like: 60% of our customers use Google, 10% visit CNN.com, etc.
- mediocrejoker 10y ago
  The difference is whether they sell those statistics (as market research) or whether they sell the ability to reach those groups (in which case they're hanging on to the de-anonymized data anyway)

paulcole 10y ago

> It seems to me that my internet connection is the same as a telephone connection You're definitely free to see it this way, but so far (for the most part) the people in power definitely don't agree.

narrowrail 10y ago
I think this whole thing is being driven by Verizon and AT&T being jealous of FB, GOOG, and AMZN. The NASDAQ is setting records and these execs think they can get it on it (or appear to) and see the same results without customer backlash.

0xfeba 10y ago

IIRC, that is the difference that a common carrier designation would make.

alasdair_ 10y ago

Even with that analogy, the telephone company can see which numbers you dial, and when. It can make inferences based on that. Did you call an escort service at night and an STD clinic in the morning? Do you regularly call televangelist donation hotline numbers? Do you get a lot of calls from recruiters? The phone company knows all of that stuff - it's one of the issues with the NSA's collection of "just metadata".

wmf 10y ago
This is one reason phone companies are regulated; are they allowed to make such inferences? Are they allowed to do anything with such inferences?
- GauntletWizard 10y ago
  The answers should be yes and yes, for simple reasons - It's utterly unenforcible otherwise, and corporations need a significant amount of those inferences for normal operation. People in town A are calling people in town B a lot? Maybe they need a direct line or to upgrade their infrastructure to handle it. Obviously, there's caveats; but for the most part those should be covered by other antidiscrimination laws, not telecom specific legislation. Telling that you call your rabbi once a week might give them clear signal that you're jewish, but they should be prevented from discriminating against you because you're jewish, and that should be enough reason to prevent them from fishing through their records to see who's a jew.
  - bb88 10y ago
    > It's utterly unenforcible otherwise... and > ...but they should be prevented from discriminating against you because you're jewish You can't have it both ways. Either a business can be regulated or it can't. And why does it have to be the business itself only must be prevented from discrimination? It's certainly possible for a single employee to send likely names of Jews to hate groups, even if the business doesn't condone his behavior.
    - GauntletWizard 10y ago
      I'll admit; I am trying to have it both ways. The way I see it is - These things are very, very hard to find and prosecute. Therefore, we should spend the time finding and prosecuting only the most egregious offenses - And accept that since we'll never prosecute more minor offenses, they might as well be legal.
      - bb88 10y ago
        Or, you can just make the data private by default and assume any violations are by default "irregular". We do this already with health care providers, attorneys, crediting agencies, banks, etc.
  - mattnewton 10y ago

oh_sigh 10y ago

Isn't that still the case? I thought this bill would only let ISPs sell aggregated anonymized data. Something like: 60% of our customers use Google, 10% visit CNN.com, etc.

mediocrejoker 10y ago
The difference is whether they sell those statistics (as market research) or whether they sell the ability to reach those groups (in which case they're hanging on to the de-anonymized data anyway)