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How Trump and the GOP-led Congress swiftly dismantled Internet privacy rules

philovivero 9y ago
Yes. Let's blame Trump and the GOP, who undoubtedly shares blame in this fiasco, but why bother singling them out when the Democrats and their privacy-invading leaders are just as bad? Why can't we work together to solve the problem that both parties are causing? We all agree the government overreach of the past few decades is too much. Why do we have to blame "the other party" ensuring that half the people who would help us will not? It seems to me everyone is bleating about how terrible the other guys are, then turning around and trying to grab as much power as they can for themselves, ignoring what that means in the next election cycle, in case the other guys come into power.
- BoiledCabbage 9y ago
  Because take a look at the list of senators and representatives from a verge article. See if you can find a single Democrat's name in there. https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/29/15100620/congress-fcc-isp-web-browsing-privacy-fire-sale https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/29/15100620/congress-fcc-isp... The continuous false equivalences between the actions of the two parts in the US is terrible. It's getting to be in the same category as the "both sides of the story" on climate change. During the 90s and earlier sure. But starting around the mid 2000s and only increasing since there has been a drastic split between the actions and behaviors of each party.
xbmcuser 9y ago
The simple thing that has happened that Bin Laden won and he has destroyed the western way of life it will still take a decade for the effects to be really felt. Bush started the loss of liberty which was continued by Obama and now accelerated by Trump.
- BoiledCabbage 9y ago
  Bin Laden had no power to changes laws in he United States. The people in power chose to use Bin Laden as an excuse to enact permanent policies to erode liberty, just like they chose to use Bin Laden as a reason to destroy Iraq which lead to countless other contemporary problems (ISIS, mass immigration, terrorism reactions).
  - xbmcuser 9y ago
    Yeah i.e Bin Laden won. He scared the people into giving away their liberty one of the things he hated about the west and the US specially.
CurtMonash 9y ago
The politics of privacy are odd. The issue described in the article was decided along strict party lines. Surely not coincidentally, the bill favored the big telecom companies at the expense of the newer parts of the tech industry. On the other hand, the Email Privacy Act passed 419-0 in the House -- totally unanimously! -- in 2016, and again by voice vote in 2017. Yet the Senate is blocking it, also in a bipartisan fashion. This issue, by way of contrast to the other one, is about balancing individual liberties against what's useful to law enforcement, without any strong or clear commercial interest on either side.
cronjobber 9y ago
This has a lot of potential. This fist stage is a blow to the Google data monopoly. I obviously don't know if there's a second stage, but there might be, if this spreads awareness that private coroporations store everything they do online—if it makes Americans more privacy conscious—there could be a second stage. The second stage would be to introduce strong privacy regulations applied to everyone. This, again, would hurt Google more than the ISPs. To someone like me who doesn't think Google can ever be hurt enough, this looks like a good law.
- devwastaken 9y ago
  I think it has a lot more potential be exploited. With Google, atleast you could choose to directly use google, or you can use tracking blockers. You had a decent level of choice. Without these privacy protections as law, anything and everything you visit, google or not, is available. So, sites that don't have google trackers on them, or don't collect specific data, like what kind of URL's your google account has visited while inside of a site - are now trackable, and sellable. ISP's also can associate what you've visited to your actual service line. ISP's know if your IP has changed, and everything about your service. Google does not, not unless you've logged in or have cookies of your sessions, both completely optional. I also don't think that having URL's themselves is a good metric. Google does a lot more than just URL's. Their JS trackers know what you're doing on a page, which gives more context to the data collected. So, Google and the big giants of online advertising I don't think are going to be outcompeted by ISP's any time soon. If anything, I would think that the data ISP's sell would be bought quite cheaply, because its only URL's.
  - cronjobber 9y ago
    You're right that this is worse for user privacy, which is exactly why there's hope the new rules could kindle an American conversation on online privacy. If that ends up giving the US strict rules for everybody, that should include Google. (Note to submitter: Including "Trump" in headlines seems to trigger a penalty on HN. I guess the site's original headline would have kept your post afloat a little longer.)

Yes. Let's blame Trump and the GOP, who undoubtedly shares blame in this fiasco, but why bother singling them out when the Democrats and their privacy-invading leaders are just as bad? Why can't we work together to solve the problem that both parties are causing? We all agree the government overreach of the past few decades is too much. Why do we have to blame "the other party" ensuring that half the people who would help us will not? It seems to me everyone is bleating about how terrible the other guys are, then turning around and trying to grab as much power as they can for themselves, ignoring what that means in the next election cycle, in case the other guys come into power.

BoiledCabbage 9y ago
Because take a look at the list of senators and representatives from a verge article. See if you can find a single Democrat's name in there. https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/29/15100620/congress-fcc-isp-web-browsing-privacy-fire-sale https://www.theverge.com/2017/3/29/15100620/congress-fcc-isp... The continuous false equivalences between the actions of the two parts in the US is terrible. It's getting to be in the same category as the "both sides of the story" on climate change. During the 90s and earlier sure. But starting around the mid 2000s and only increasing since there has been a drastic split between the actions and behaviors of each party.

xbmcuser 9y ago

The simple thing that has happened that Bin Laden won and he has destroyed the western way of life it will still take a decade for the effects to be really felt. Bush started the loss of liberty which was continued by Obama and now accelerated by Trump.

BoiledCabbage 9y ago
Bin Laden had no power to changes laws in he United States. The people in power chose to use Bin Laden as an excuse to enact permanent policies to erode liberty, just like they chose to use Bin Laden as a reason to destroy Iraq which lead to countless other contemporary problems (ISIS, mass immigration, terrorism reactions).
- xbmcuser 9y ago
  Yeah i.e Bin Laden won. He scared the people into giving away their liberty one of the things he hated about the west and the US specially.

CurtMonash 9y ago

The politics of privacy are odd. The issue described in the article was decided along strict party lines. Surely not coincidentally, the bill favored the big telecom companies at the expense of the newer parts of the tech industry. On the other hand, the Email Privacy Act passed 419-0 in the House -- totally unanimously! -- in 2016, and again by voice vote in 2017. Yet the Senate is blocking it, also in a bipartisan fashion. This issue, by way of contrast to the other one, is about balancing individual liberties against what's useful to law enforcement, without any strong or clear commercial interest on either side.

cronjobber 9y ago

This has a lot of potential. This fist stage is a blow to the Google data monopoly. I obviously don't know if there's a second stage, but there might be, if this spreads awareness that private coroporations store everything they do online—if it makes Americans more privacy conscious—there could be a second stage. The second stage would be to introduce strong privacy regulations applied to everyone. This, again, would hurt Google more than the ISPs. To someone like me who doesn't think Google can ever be hurt enough, this looks like a good law.

devwastaken 9y ago
I think it has a lot more potential be exploited. With Google, atleast you could choose to directly use google, or you can use tracking blockers. You had a decent level of choice. Without these privacy protections as law, anything and everything you visit, google or not, is available. So, sites that don't have google trackers on them, or don't collect specific data, like what kind of URL's your google account has visited while inside of a site - are now trackable, and sellable. ISP's also can associate what you've visited to your actual service line. ISP's know if your IP has changed, and everything about your service. Google does not, not unless you've logged in or have cookies of your sessions, both completely optional. I also don't think that having URL's themselves is a good metric. Google does a lot more than just URL's. Their JS trackers know what you're doing on a page, which gives more context to the data collected. So, Google and the big giants of online advertising I don't think are going to be outcompeted by ISP's any time soon. If anything, I would think that the data ISP's sell would be bought quite cheaply, because its only URL's.
- cronjobber 9y ago
  You're right that this is worse for user privacy, which is exactly why there's hope the new rules could kindle an American conversation on online privacy. If that ends up giving the US strict rules for everybody, that should include Google. (Note to submitter: Including "Trump" in headlines seems to trigger a penalty on HN. I guess the site's original headline would have kept your post afloat a little longer.)