4 ms·

Although I am not at all sympathetic to these ISPs, I do agree that privacy protections ought to apply uniformly to all sellers and service providers.

bitxbitxbitcoin 7y ago
I agree with you but there's arguably a line to be drawn between say the Facebooks or Googles of the world - where arguably you're giving consent by using the platform and there are others to choose from - and ISPs especially as there may only be one ISP available to you in rural Maine.
- sorenn111 7y ago
  No need to go all the way to rural Maine. In NYC and SF, I've never had more than 2 options both of which are terrible and have the same faults and flaws. A 2 company oligopoly with high annoyance/cost of switching is not much better than monopoly.
- mirimir 7y ago
  Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22386065 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22386065 Also, I wasn't just talking about ISPs and Internet firms. How is it OK for banks to sell data about their customers?
AnthonyMouse 7y ago
> Although I am not at all sympathetic to these ISPs, I do agree that privacy protections ought to apply uniformly to all sellers and service providers. ISPs are different because of the lack of competition. If you don't like Google you can use Duck Duck Go. If you don't like WhatsApp you can use Signal. If you don't like Windows 10 you can use Ubuntu (or, if you want to argue Windows is still a monopoly, Microsoft should move to the "monopolists" column and be subject to the stricter rules). In particular, in those cases the competitors actually do have meaningfully more respect for privacy. In markets where every reasonably available provider snoops and the market has high barriers to entry, that's a different situation.
- mirimir 7y ago
  Lack of competition certainly limits customer options if there's no statutory privacy protection. However, I don't get how privacy protection is so distinguishable from statutory protection against fraud, for example. Also, if competitors do respect privacy, why would statutory protection be burdensome?
  - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
    > However, I don't get how privacy protection is so distinguishable from statutory protection against fraud, for example. The issue is that "privacy" itself becomes ambiguous in many contexts. For an ISP this is easy, because they can forward your traffic without ever storing any of it. They have no legitimate reason to keep it and they only want to in order to invade your privacy, so there is nothing good lost by prohibiting that. By contrast, how do you make Waze work without user location data? How do you make recommendations based on viewing history without keeping viewing history? How do you ship a physical product to a customer without having their mailing address? In these cases it's not just a simple matter of not collecting the data. So the problem is the complexity of the rules. "ISPs shouldn't store any user internet traffic or metadata" is simple and reasonable, and is necessary because without it the one or two local ISPs would all do the opposite and no one would have a choice. Applying a much more complicated set of rules to companies that do have legitimate reasons to collect some data or use it for various things customers actually want has both higher costs from an administrative perspective and lower benefits because viable privacy-respecting competitors actually exist in real life for the people who don't consent.
    - mirimir 7y ago
      I concede that privacy is less clear cut than fraud. But even fraud can be ambiguous. As in the recent thread about Amazon. Anyway, it's my impression that ISPs already log some traffic metadata, given that I read about requests from police etc. And of course there are capabilities under CALEA. And it's understandable that they'd like to earn some money from it, just as Google etc (and my bloody credit providers) do. Selling and shipping stuff obviously requires information about customers, such as names, mailing addresses, phone numbers, and credit card numbers. But why should they get to monetize that information, in ways that don't benefit me? That's arguably as clear a distinction as ISPs being unable to monetize by traffic metadata. I agree that it's more complicated for services that require browsing and location history. But I suspect that much more processing could be done locally. And where that was unworkable, information could be firewalled from other business units. And even about ISPs without meaningful competition, customers can always use VPN services. That's become quite common in many places. My ISP gets nothing from me except which VPN service I use, and throughput vs time. And that VPN service gets nothing from me except which VPN services I use through it. And so on until the last VPN service, unless I'm using Tor. Also, the availability of privacy-respecting alternatives doesn't protect people who are too clueless to use them.

bitxbitxbitcoin 7y ago

I agree with you but there's arguably a line to be drawn between say the Facebooks or Googles of the world - where arguably you're giving consent by using the platform and there are others to choose from - and ISPs especially as there may only be one ISP available to you in rural Maine.

sorenn111 7y ago
No need to go all the way to rural Maine. In NYC and SF, I've never had more than 2 options both of which are terrible and have the same faults and flaws. A 2 company oligopoly with high annoyance/cost of switching is not much better than monopoly.
mirimir 7y ago
Please see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22386065 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22386065 Also, I wasn't just talking about ISPs and Internet firms. How is it OK for banks to sell data about their customers?

AnthonyMouse 7y ago

> Although I am not at all sympathetic to these ISPs, I do agree that privacy protections ought to apply uniformly to all sellers and service providers. ISPs are different because of the lack of competition. If you don't like Google you can use Duck Duck Go. If you don't like WhatsApp you can use Signal. If you don't like Windows 10 you can use Ubuntu (or, if you want to argue Windows is still a monopoly, Microsoft should move to the "monopolists" column and be subject to the stricter rules). In particular, in those cases the competitors actually do have meaningfully more respect for privacy. In markets where every reasonably available provider snoops and the market has high barriers to entry, that's a different situation.

mirimir 7y ago
Lack of competition certainly limits customer options if there's no statutory privacy protection. However, I don't get how privacy protection is so distinguishable from statutory protection against fraud, for example. Also, if competitors do respect privacy, why would statutory protection be burdensome?
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  > However, I don't get how privacy protection is so distinguishable from statutory protection against fraud, for example. The issue is that "privacy" itself becomes ambiguous in many contexts. For an ISP this is easy, because they can forward your traffic without ever storing any of it. They have no legitimate reason to keep it and they only want to in order to invade your privacy, so there is nothing good lost by prohibiting that. By contrast, how do you make Waze work without user location data? How do you make recommendations based on viewing history without keeping viewing history? How do you ship a physical product to a customer without having their mailing address? In these cases it's not just a simple matter of not collecting the data. So the problem is the complexity of the rules. "ISPs shouldn't store any user internet traffic or metadata" is simple and reasonable, and is necessary because without it the one or two local ISPs would all do the opposite and no one would have a choice. Applying a much more complicated set of rules to companies that do have legitimate reasons to collect some data or use it for various things customers actually want has both higher costs from an administrative perspective and lower benefits because viable privacy-respecting competitors actually exist in real life for the people who don't consent.
  - mirimir 7y ago
    I concede that privacy is less clear cut than fraud. But even fraud can be ambiguous. As in the recent thread about Amazon. Anyway, it's my impression that ISPs already log some traffic metadata, given that I read about requests from police etc. And of course there are capabilities under CALEA. And it's understandable that they'd like to earn some money from it, just as Google etc (and my bloody credit providers) do. Selling and shipping stuff obviously requires information about customers, such as names, mailing addresses, phone numbers, and credit card numbers. But why should they get to monetize that information, in ways that don't benefit me? That's arguably as clear a distinction as ISPs being unable to monetize by traffic metadata. I agree that it's more complicated for services that require browsing and location history. But I suspect that much more processing could be done locally. And where that was unworkable, information could be firewalled from other business units. And even about ISPs without meaningful competition, customers can always use VPN services. That's become quite common in many places. My ISP gets nothing from me except which VPN service I use, and throughput vs time. And that VPN service gets nothing from me except which VPN services I use through it. And so on until the last VPN service, unless I'm using Tor. Also, the availability of privacy-respecting alternatives doesn't protect people who are too clueless to use them.