Tt post mar 28, 2017 - b

http://toledotalk.com/cgi-bin/tt.pl/article/210675/28Mar2017/Internet_privacy

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Kaptur voted NO.

Latta voted YES.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/03/28/statement-administration-policy-sjres-34-%E2%80%93-disapproving-federal

Mar 28, 2017 - House passes resolution that lets ISPs sell customers' browsing history without user permission; measure will go to President Trump for signature

As most had expected, the House of Representatives today voted 215 to 205 to kill privacy rules protecting US broadband subscribers. If you're interested in a little thing called public accountability, you can find a vote down of which Representatives voted for the measure here.

The rules, approved by the FCC last fall, were slated to take effect this month.

But thanks to relentless lobbying by the broadband and marketing industries, the GOP quickly rushed to dismantle the rules at ISP request.

Today's vote came after the Senate voted 50-48 last week to [kill] the rules. The vote to dismantle the rules is seen as one of the more brazen examples of pay-to-play politics in recent memory. It's a massive win for giant ISPs; especially those like AT&T and Verizon that are pushing hard into the Millennial advertising business.

The FCC pursued broadband privacy rules after companies like Verizon got caught covertly modifying packets to track users around the internet, and companies like AT&T and Comcast began exploring forcing users to pay more for privacy. Other ISPs, like CableOne, have crowed about using financial data to provide poor customers with even worse customer service.

https://www.axios.com/house-votes-to-roll-back-privacy-protections-for-internet-c-2333770227.html

The House voted 215-to-205 Tuesday night to overturn Obama-era regulations that require internet providers like Verizon, Comcast and AT&T to get a user's permission before sharing their browsing history and other data with advertisers. It also prohibits the FCC from creating similar regulations in the future.

... this likely clears the way for ISPs to go full speed ahead in taking on Facebook and Google for digital ad dollars.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/03/28/the-house-just-voted-to-wipe-out-the-fccs-landmark-internet-privacy-protections

Hacker News thread

Here's an idiotic comment from the HN thread:

This, right here, is the consequence of the withdrawal from politics many geeks advocated very strongly in an earlier time. "Everything is corrupt, it doesn't matter"... turns out to only be a viable philosophy when things mostly work well enough.

What a shitbird. Blaming citizens who don't vote is absurd.

I could argue that people who use Facebook and Google products already don't give a damn about privacy.

Here's a a sensible-sounding comment from the HN thread:

Before getting all spun up, I'd dig a little deeper on the issue than what the WaPo does in this piece.

These regulations were only voted on late in 2016 and never went into effect. To do the regulations, the FCC reclassified the internet as basically ye olde telephone system, which then made it subject to their purview based on laws created in the 1930s. This is classic overreach. Congress never gave this authority to the FCC and is acting to put them back in line with the law.

It's pathetic the the WaPo used their platform to create more heat than light on this, by selective quoting. Here's a more full quote from Rep Blackburn that explains her position more fully.

“The FCC already has the ability to oversee privacy with broadband providers,” Blackburn explained. “That is done primarily through Section 222 of the Communications Act, and additional authority is granted through Sections 201 and 202. Now, what they did was to go outside of their bounds and expand that. They did a swipe at the jurisdiction of the Federal Trade Commission, the FTC. They have traditionally been our nation’s primary privacy regulator, and they have done a very good job of it.”

The lesson here really is that if the issue is really important, then get an actual law passed instead of trying to contort regulatory authority based on laws from the 1930s. The previous president could certainly have done this, but chose not to.

Another level-headed HN comment:

Something that is not mentioned in the [WaPo] article is that the FCC regulations in question were passed in October 2016 and have never gone in to effect. So, to be strictly accurate, the vote does not roll back any regulations which actually ever affected the internet.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/03/congress-sides-cable-and-telephone-industry