What we have in protections and freedoms were purchased through a ton of hard work by prior generations: the liberty to slack and think that it just works ok is a nice side effect of the prior sweat.
For JS 34 [1] Mitch McConnell (R, KY) limited debate to 10 minutes--I'm unclear from the transcript exactly how this was allowed. Richard Blumenthal (D, CT) offered resistance to limiting debate, and Kamala Harris (D, CA) and Patrick Leahy (D, VT) requested the role be called several times as a delaying tactic, but the limiting of debate went through.
Just prior to the vote, Brian Schatz (D, HI) offered some debate, but this is cosmetic given the known votes.
My read there is little to be gained by trying to legislate implementation power that has been ceded to the executive branch and the various agencies that are run by appointment, and therefore a costly filibuster and fight was not worth the time, effort and political mud.
[0] https://www.senate.gov/CRSpubs/577d2a5e-2b47-4045-95fa-a7639...
[1] https://www.congress.gov/congressional-record/2017/03/23/sen...
But the problem is more systemic. It's at the center of the culture of this society: it's the fact that MONEY (== DOMINATION) has been made the most central and culturally venerated value.
To change that, a lot of suffering will have to occur, because those who benefit from MONEY (== DOMINATION) will use exactly that to defend this (sick) cultural value by - you guessed it - dominating everybody who's against it. And for that, other sick things like mass surveillance technology, a militarized police force, perfectly controlled media, and pressure on your economic wellbeing and your physical and mental health will be used.
Active and rational political conversations would, in my mind, have mitigated a lot of the problems with money in politics. Gerrymandering would not be (as large as) a problem if the masses had not been asleep at the wheel.
It is an uphill fight from this point forward.
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/p/pericles387116.h...
Your complaints about "people pontificating along party lines" do nothing but reveal your own biases when the vote is so starkly along party lines. In a case like this, the objective analysis is clearly that the Republicans are wrong and the Democrats are right.
I really hope hackers obtain records of every Republican Congresscritter's creepiest porn viewing.
The vote was along party lines. You are asking for non-partisan insight where there is literally none to be had. There are good guys and bad guys in this issue, and they wear uniforms to tell you who they are.
https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2016/12/02/2016-28...
At 73 pages, it's a doozy. I don't know exactly what the effects would have been, but one important thing to note that I did not see mentioned once in any of the reporting about this is that the rule has only been in effect for 84 days. So I wouldn't expect any changes to be too noticeable.
Also worth noting is that whatever restrictions on ISPs are removed by this, it doesn't guarantee that ISPs will start doing that thing immediately, if at all. I also haven't seen reporting on what past behavior ISPs have already engaged in that this rule would have stopped.
Since both sides are astonishingly bad, I usually end up voting third party in races where there is one.
That's apparent in the US where elections results are influenced more by those with barely a high school education than by their more educated fellow citizens.
The most important qualification one needs to have, it seems, to be elected to the Texas Education Agency, is to be a "true conservation". That board practically decides what your children study in school.
And over here on HN, the policy is to not get into political discussions.
The government is trying to reduce protections of civil liberties, the environment, etc.
Why?
Because the party in control of the legislative and executive branches are removing those protections.
Why?
Because it is in their best interest and because they promised to do so in their election campaigns.
Why?
A. Because their corporate sponsors want less regulation.
B. Because their supporters want less regulation.
Why?
Because less regulation means more profits (If you ignore the environmental and human costs).
And, because many Americans equate regulation with infringement of their personal freedom.
We need to stop assuming that bad things are happening because a few bad apples tricked roughly half the population to support them. They are making America great again. Look at any point in time before now in American history and you will find less civil liberty, more oppression of workers, and more destruction of the environment. It was promised. Its being delivered. And no one was fooled. It is straight up whathalf the population asked for.
> We need to stop assuming that bad things are happening because a few bad apples tricked roughly half the population to support them. They are making America great again. Look at any point in time before now in American history and you will find less civil liberty, more oppression of workers, and more destruction of the environment. It was promised. Its being delivered. And no one was fooled. It is straight up what half the population asked for.
You're correct by and large. I won't get into the remarks on the (effective) propaganda efforts Fox & crew have done. Much deception has happened there.
But, this specific bill is troublesome in part because the lawmakers often are very ignorant of what's going on, much like many of the senior judges in the US. This is one part generational divide, one part tech avoiding law, and one part lobbying. Some of that is avoidable by engagement, and if adult geeks had realized this in the 80s & 90s instead of disengaging from politics, the world would be different.
This is completely false. Less regulations helps the status-quo as companies stop to need to be innovative. And it helps old-fashioned contaminating industries.
> Look at any point in time before now in American history and you will find less civil liberty, more oppression of workers, and more destruction of the environment. It was promised. Its being delivered.
Yes. That's it. And that's why so much powerful people want bad schools and worse education. If people knew how the world works, they will be less prone to populism.
I oppose what the Republican Congress is doing.
Having said all of that, the FCC has no freaking business defining privacy. The system was terribly out of whack to have them do this in the first place. My support of their move and my opposition to what Congress is currently doing is simply because I'm trying to pick the lesser of two evils. It's not because there was simple good position/side and bad position/side. Wish that it were so simple.
Both political parties have screwed over privacy and anonymity online -- in terrible and huge ways. And the system is terribly corrupt. And....we should take action to make our political views clear.
My problem is that "let's take action" turns quickly into "Group X is in the pocket of political party Y"
And that's how we got here in the first place.
I would agree that the remit of Congress is to govern the people, by the people, and privacy falls under that umbrella. The executive branch should not be operating as an independent law-making body, as it has been.
I would gently suggest that when geeks look at politics, it's much like looking at a huge codebase written for decades - our reaction is that it's corrupt and needs a rewrite. I have learned through very careful study and hard experience that often there are good reasons for codebases to be "crufty", and similar with politics. Doesn't mean reform can't be done, but it means we have to work within the codebase, and with the current web of loyalties to some extent.
The culture has shifted and moved, but the "avoid politics, it's evil" mentality still hangs around, a lot.
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.
Seeing this coming, FCC proposed privacy rules around the same time: https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-16-39A1_Rc...
Which did go into effect on January 3rd: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2016/12/02/2016-28...
Among the privacy requirements, there are also mandatory breach notifications.
The industry's response is here: https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/files/2017/0... . They complained about the breach requirements, and also claimed the difference between them being opt-in for advertising profiling vs Google et al being opt-out violated their First Amendment rights.
A coalition of Internet advertisers filed a similar response: http://ana.net/getfile/24564 . Here, they claim another First Amendment conflict with: "The creation, analysis, and transfer of consumer data for marketing purposes constitutes speech"
So yes, please dig deeper. This is a year-long end to a battle that AT&T successfully opened up in their appeal. It's over; the ISPs won, at the expense of individual American privacy.
That decision seems insanely broad; there's nothing in there that prevents AT&T from buying a breakfast cereal company and selling corn flakes that claim each 1 pound box contains 80 pounds of cereal and will make you live forever.
At the same time, it doesn't seem to apply to ISP broadly; only ISPs that qualify as common carriers. Although the definition of common carrier seems overly broad itself, according to [1], even pointing out that Disney is a common carrier because their roller coasters in their theme parks carry passengers [2].
Has any attempt been made to amend either the FTC acts or the FCC acts to clarify the extent to which entities are classified as common carriers only as regards to those activities which meet the definition?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_carrier
[2] Gomez v. Superior Court (Walt Disney Co.) (2005) 35 C4th 1125, http://online.ceb.com/calcases/C4/35C4t1125.htm
See my comment below https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13986192
This is a case of a regulatory agency overstepping its bounds and seizing jurisdiction outside of the domain allowed for it by Congress. That's the language in which the bill is framed, the the way in which it has been discussed in the past weeks and months that is has gotten (minimal) coverage.
Then the issue got picked up and spun when somebody called attention to the fact that the FCC's regulations (which they were not authorized to make) were more consumer-friendly than the FTC's. That's true, and it's a real problem. But that does not mean that the answer is to sanction the FCC's power-grab here. The right thing to do is to pursue consumer regulatory protections _within the confines of the law_, which means either petitioning the FTC or new legislation.
Don't confuse concern over process with favoring the resulting outcomes.
ISPs should be classified as modern utilities. They are trying to be the infrastructure provider while being regulated like the business' that consume the infrastructure. But they don't want to be classified as such because of the burden of regulations this would inherit.
I've yet to meet someone in life that thinks that their internet provider should be able to sell all information about their activities (while charging for the service).
Remember, the telephone industry was regulated because telephone companies merged and cooperated to create regional monopolies and destroy competition, all at the expense of consumers. Comcast, Time Warner and the like have all been doing the same.
The FCC has scarcely been better than these companies. It has a history of being a revolving door for companies. Consider what RCA/FCC did to Armstrong back in the day.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwin_Howard_Armstrong
Just because the FCC does something doesn't mean its good, legal, or whatever. It's just what 3 of 5 unelected, unaccountable appointees cooked up. When the board changes, they can just as easily uncook it up.
Referring to this privacy exposure as "something that may/will happen because of Trump" ignores that it is already Federal law and has been since 2015. Yes, in removing FTC authority over broadband, the Obama administration created this privacy exposure in the first place. That tap wouldn't shut off until next December at the earliest if the current administration did nothing.
That privacy ship has sailed. Broadband providers can have been sucking this data up for over two years by the time this particular Obama regulation would kick in, even if left as was. The Obama administration could have timed the FTC authority removal to not happen until replacement protections were in place, but, no.
The EFF is oddly silent about why they've been so oddly silent about this exposure for over a year now. Their partisanship is showing.
You are conflating two different orders; the reclassification was part of the 2015 open internet order (and was expressly laid out as a legal option in the court decision striking down the 2010 open internet order), not the 2016 privacy order at issue here.
> They did a swipe at the jurisdiction of the Federal Trade Commission, the FTC.
The FTC has no authority over even the non-telephone operations of the telephone companies who are many of the major ISPs.
It was the FCC that decided in the first place to classify ISPs as information services rather than common carriers. They have the authority from Congress to do that, and I'm aware of nothing in the laws that granted that authority that say that once the FCC makes such a classification they cannot later revisit that and change the classification.
> 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.
There have been several additions and amendments to the 1930s laws, such as the Telecommunication Act of 1996. It is disingenuous to suggest that the FCC is relying on 1930s laws for their authority.
1. The opposing party's opposing the ruling party is a natural process of government. It's the normal state of things. Your saying that it was "poor behavior" implies that it was an anomaly, that the Republicans did something wrong by not supporting everything Obama wanted to do, and that the minority party is supposed to accede to every demand of the ruling party, which would be absurd.
2. The Democrats only controlled Congress for 2 of Obama's 8 years. You imply that, even when Congress is not controlled by the President's own party, that Congress should accede to his demands. This is absurd. It's not how our government works, it's not how it's ever worked, and it's not how it was intended to work--indeed, exactly the opposite is the case.
3. If your implications were true, you should be criticizing the Democrats for doing exactly the same thing right now with far more vehemence.
4. The ostensibly "grassroots supporters" of the current opposition is actually ruthless. Were there violent riots in the streets of cities across the country when Obama was elected?
Does this legislation explicitly condone the collection or sale of browsing data? (I'd still rather have the protection than not, but can't seem to find a good detailed explanation.)
does that mean that our data was already (or is currently) being sold?
They've been able to for at least 1.5 years, and counting.
Right, the Republican Congress was very happy to work the prior President on sensible legislation.
False. Parts of the regulation went into effect 30 days after publication. Parts went into effect 90 days after publication. Part would have gone into effect 6 months after publication. Part would have gone into effect 12 months after publication.
See pg. 202 of the Report and Order.
I thought not.
That's silly. That's like saying phone doesn't deserve protection from wiretapping because there never was a law specifically against it.
I'd just like to register my opinion that I don't see Washington Post is an objective, nor even a trustworthy source at this point. When they print something it's often worth looking deeper into I believe.
So you've never actually been to Breitbart then? I checked it regularly before the 2016 elections and, in those days, it certainly earned its nickname "stormfront lite." They've toned it down since the additional scrutiny and subsequent mainstreaming of the Trump era, but WaPo has never been and will never even come close to Breitbart. Also Breitbart is an overt propaganda outlet. WaPo may seem biased, but it certainly does not engage propaganda on the same level as Breitbart.
That's because you probably believe that the Illuminati or clockwork elves are real.
EFF: https://www.eff.org/ Find your reps: https://tryvoices.com/
Of course, said discussions are pointless without action.
With over 20,000 phone calls to Congress in just 48 hours, this is now on the scopes of current congresspeople (and those who would like to campaign against them).
(And please consider joining EFF as a recurring dues-paying member. The more people we can say we speak for, the more impact our arguments have. https://supporters.eff.org/donate/ )
support the EFF
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/02/fcc-votes-net-neutrali...
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/12/network-neutrality-201...
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/02/congress-contemplating...
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/11/verizon-x-uidh
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/01/verizon-and-turn-break...
etc.
"Reclassification under Title II was a necessary step in order to give the FCC the authority it needed to enact net neutrality rules. But now we face the really hard part: making sure the FCC doesn't abuse its authority." [2]
"The FCC has also failed to give proper consideration to the invasiveness of deep packet inspection, used by ISPs to read a user's Internet traffic. The "lawful content" limitation may give legal cover to this privacy-violating practice. In response, the Commission simply suggests that users protect their own privacy using encryption, virtual private networks, and Tor. While it's a very good idea for users to protect themselves with such tools, that shouldn't be their only protection against the very companies they are forced to trust in order to gain access to the Internet – particularly when ISPs like Verizon have gone to extreme measures to circumvent users' privacy controls. Leaving users to fend for themselves does not bode well for the FCC's future proceedings on privacy rules." [3]
By January 2016, the EFF, along with several other advocacy groups, have co-authored a letter [9] to the FCC in response to the FCC's announcement that it will soon make rules about customer privacy for broadband internet [5]. This was done soon after the FTC's commissioner welcomed the FCC's cooperation to result in stronger privacy protections. For a rationale of the FCC's actions, too long to quote inline, I highly recommend the section "III. A. Background and Need for the Rules" of FCC 16-148 [11] and other sections to follow.
As they often have, Ars Technica provided excellent coverage of the context surrounding these events [4][5][6][7][10]. Notably, their recent article [8] writes about the nuances of which rule was made in response to what, and how the situation we find ourselves in today came to be. The 9th Circuit's opinion in the FTC vs. AT&T case threw a wrench into things [10][12].
[1] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/02/huge-win-open-internet... [2] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/02/fcc-votes-net-neutrali... [3] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/03/todays-net-neutrality-... [4] https://arstechnica.com/business/2015/02/fcc-votes-for-net-n... [5] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/03/isps-wont-be-all... [6] https://arstechnica.com/business/2016/03/fcc-votes-to-help-p... [7] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2016/10/isps-... [8] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/03/how-i... [9] https://www.publicknowledge.org/assets/uploads/documents/Bro... [10] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/08/atts-common-carr... [11] https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-16-148A1.p... [12] https://iapp.org/news/a/the-att-v-ftc-common-carrier-ruling-...
Sources: http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2017/03/02/fcc-sets-... http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2017/03/28/broadband...
"This undoes the 73-page publication published on 2016-12-02 by the FCC, most of which took effect 2017-01-03, some parts later on 2017-03-02, both after the election and one of them after the inauguration."
Meanwhile, [4] says:
"This pending rule change is not in effect at all yet; it was only put through 3 weeks after the 2016 election and wouldn't have taken effect until next December."
Not sure if it's [2] or [4] that's wrong about the dates of taking effect, but it's clear that the FCC rule was enacted very late.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13942345 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13943942 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13943458 [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13944790
So, given that it was published on 2 December 2016[2], the earliest it could possibly have taken effect is December 2 or even 4 (December 2 is a Saturday)
[0] https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-16-148A1.p... (Item #312. Page 132 of 219 of the PDF. Yes, it's a huge file.)
[1] "PRA approval, as defined herein, is not complete until the Commission publishes notice of OMB approval in the Federal Register", so it was also conditional on approval by the Office of Management and Budget. AFAIK, that never happened, either.
[2] https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2016-12-02/pdf/2016-28006.p...
> DATES: Effective January 3, 2017, except for §§ 64.2003, 64.2004, 64.2006, and 64.2011(b)
The complete list of sections that are specified in the rule change (last couple of pages):
64.2001 Basis and purpose.
64.2002 Definitions.
64.2003 Notice requirements for telecommunications carriers.
64.2004 Customer approval.
64.2005 Data security.
64.2006 Data breach notification.
64.2010 Business customer exemption for provision of telecommunications services other than BIAS.
64.2011 BIAS offers conditioned on waiver of privacy rights.
64.2012 Effect on State law.
So it went into effect, but only the parts of it that were basically definitional in nature, and some places specifying where the regulations do not apply. So in a realistic sense, the regulations never went into effect.
[1] https://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/FR-2016-12-02/pdf/2016-28006.p...
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/02/congress-contemplating...
I mean, as long as I'm dreaming too, we should give assembly programming kits to first graders.
That, and the Congressional GOP used up their political mana points on the failed Obamacare repeal.
Six more flipped Republicans would have killed this bill, which would have meant this wouldn't happen. You have the ability to make a real difference here by calling your Representative and telling them how you expect them to vote.
But, instead, what I'm hearing is that you're throwing up your hands and saying 'party line votes!' Call next time. It'll make a difference.
I assume you know how to pitch manure, program a computer, and cook a tasty meal. Yet tell me, how long would it take you to butcher a hog from carcass to grocery portions? Have you ever done so?
How long would it take you to plan an invasion of the scale of the landings at Inchon? Have you ever done so?
- Constituents don't generally follow their congresspeople. Nobody is subbbed to /r/HoR12thdistrictofCA.
- Legislators don't have the time to do such updates because they spend a lot of it fundraising.
- Being honest about how they evaluate arguments would leave legislators open to the scorn of people who think the government officials should never have misconceptions or make errors of reasoning.
And really, this isn't that hard of an issue, I could probably ask my gramma "should AT&T be able to sell your browsing history to advertisers" and she would say no.
Maybe we should reduce that range of issues by cutting down the amount of regulation that the government is responsible for maintaining.
(They could have let the rule go into effect and then drafted legislation to clarify and unify the regulation of internet privacy. This might have been annoying for ISPs. So what.)
You might have a few R's (Amash?) that will pull the Libertarian card saying that free market should resolve this one it's own...choosing to ignore reality...the monopoly (just about) every American faces when it comes to choice for an ISP.
And obviously all the D's will vote yes as the rules were created and established in a Dem FCC / Presidency.
Despite party, it is sad to see quotes like Blackburn's carry any weight on any periodical outside of the puzzle section containing a where's waldo-esq spot the BS.
Here is the actual roll call for anyone curious, I had trouble finding it...maybe because the vote was so recent?: http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2017/roll200.xml
Who knew.
Pretty much, yes. It's fucking depressing.
The internet was supposed to be this bastion of knowledge, information and free exchange of ideas. Now it's just heading towards another avenue for large-organizations monetize the individual.
Granted, the internet will indeed remain a bastion of knowledge and information but we shouldn't have to look over our shoulders when taking advantage of that.
It's a no brainer that most people would recoil at the idea of everything they do on the Internet suddenly being for sale. It would be super easy to come up with at least a dozen relatable nefarious use cases and stuff them into TV commercials and ads and tying it to the Republican party.
But nope, silence. It's almost like they don't want to be in power. It feels like I live in a de facto one-party state.
Start some display campaigns injecting peoples names and other personal information into ads. Have this follow people around the web. Even if data is not taken from what has been allowed here, most people will find it creepy. Link ad to a website explaining whats going on and how to contact their local member.
I suspect with a fairly reasonable spend you could get some strong resistance and media attention.
SNI makes gettng the hostnames easier than if they were encrypted as they are without SNI.
What would you encrypt the hostname with?
This is now a tunnel.
Over that tunnel:
* If you've connected before attempt to reuse the cached credentials to further establish a connection to the requested certificate. This validates prior authorization of being the target host.
* If the above fails or if it's a new host, ask for the certificate, perform extensive validation including REQUIRING that the external revocation check authenticates and confirms non-revoked.
Modifying the SNI hostname in transit is pointless - the client still knows what hostname they sent. Changing the SNI hostname would only cause the server to send back a different certificate, which would immediately be noticed by the client.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Online_Privacy_Pr...
What are they going to do, repeal a law that was sold on the premise of "think of the children"? Sounds like something that would come up during re-election: imagine a "Rep. X voted to make it easier for online predators to find your children online" campaign.
Condense something like this into a 1 minute add, run it as a 'how to' aimed at predators with the intent of striking fear into the hearts of parents who see it, and then end it with a short message on why we should keep internet usage private.
YEAs ---215
R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R
NAYs ---205
D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D
Not Voting ---9
R R R R R R D D D
House Results - http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2017/roll202.xml
# Senate
YEAs ---50
R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R R
NAYs ---48
D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D D I D D D D D D D D D D D D I D D D D D D D D D D D
Not Voting ---2
R R
Senate Results - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13943060
(I liked this format.)
1. http://www.ala.org/advocacy/privacyconfidentiality/privacy/s... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Privacy_Protection_Act
Is there a simple guide or steps that I can follow to make myself anonymous? I know there is TOR and VPNs, how can I go about setting it up?
https://medium.freecodecamp.com/tor-signal-and-beyond-a-law-...
https://medium.freecodecamp.com/how-to-set-up-a-vpn-in-10-mi...
This is pretty much the only way to ensure any remote privicy (sometimes).
https://medium.freecodecamp.com/how-to-set-up-a-vpn-in-5-min...
Disclosure: I built it.
Edit: Here's sort of an answer to my own question https://www.howtogeek.com/221889/connect-your-home-router-to...
If you run through a 3rd party VPN you have to trust the provider to not sell your information.
If you run through a US based datacenter your data is still within reach of a subpoena but your ISP won't have access to it.
Why weren't you running a VPN already?
This was a vote to head off the implementation of a regulation that hadn't gone into effect already.
SpaceX's planned satellite internet will hopefully fill this void for the world... until Elon dies and it's taken over by the evil, ignoramuses of corporate greed.
For broadband Internet, my understanding is that most have exactly one choice; in my experience, usually one of Comcast or TWC. (Currently, where I live in the Bay Area, Comcast is my only choice. And it shows: Google Fiber would offer a speed 500% higher, for the same price, if it could only materialize.)
If you allow for non-broadband options, okay, yes, I have choices. That gets me AT&T — who sells their users data — and mobile cell carriers (the latency is unacceptable).
But all is not lost. There are municipalities that are providing a competing internet service. Internet is fast approaching a public good/right, so I believe this is a worthy approach. Here's an example near me: http://www.timescall.com/longmont-local-news/ci_28030675/lon...
As mentioned, SpaceX will circumvent the local restrictions and limitations of 'wire in the ground' with their satellites.
And now, if there are some ISPs that will sell your data and some that won't, that differentiation may open up the door to greater competition. Perhaps even, that's a silver lining to breaking up the ISP oligarchy that exists now.
At face value this is a good thing for privacy, but I am concerned that when lawmakers realise their error they will just legislate themselves out of the hole by making access to VPN services harder.
> (d) It shall not be unlawful under this chapter for a person not acting under color of law to intercept a wire, oral, or electronic communication where such person is a party to the communication or where one of the parties to the communication has given prior consent to such interception unless such communication is intercepted for the purpose of committing any criminal or tortious act in violation of the Constitution or laws of the United States or of any State.
The obvious followup is complaints about how ofter consumers don't have a choice. Perhaps the reason there is so little competition is that local municipalities enter into franchise agreements where in order to add internet to one house, you have to agree to cover the entire area. This makes it so that only big pockets and people that can influence politicians get the build an ISP. Also, we could look at access fees to explain monopoly providers. https://www.wired.com/2013/07/we-need-to-stop-focusing-on-ju...
If there were genuine competition perhaps real consumer preference would win out, whichever that may be. Rather than deciding how much people value privacy, perhaps we should let people choose for themselves at a level other than the federal one.
Yes, think of all the poor, unfortunate ISPs that are barely scraping by every year to give you your unprecedented internet bandwidth. These are small companies, owned by people who have children to feed. Selling your private data is one of the only ways they can stay out of bankruptcy. We all need to be a little more mindful of who we're hurting next time we enact this kind of draconian regulation.
I think there is always a flip side and I think this is it. Why can facebook take my data and sell it but for the ISP, my data is treated like a health record? Personally, I don' think anyone should be able to sell my data.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13942989
> In June 2015, the FCC reclassified the ISP's as common carriers. Tada, the FTC rules no longer apply. So the FCC regulated them with roughly the same set of rules. Now they've undone this.
Implementing this change via legislation also means that changes in these regulations require statute change (not purely by the whim of any President).
This is an unfortunate example where government is not set up to address concerns of today's environment. They are trying to apply legal constructs of 20-50 years ago to a quickly changing age. And while you can argue whether the prior administration did the right thing legislating in this environment, the one thing they did was understand that access to the Internet should be a right as opposed to a privilege. Like education, access to 911, etc. As more services move exclusively online, this fundamental access question only becomes a greater concern.
If individuals aren't guaranteed access nor have any protections online, then we are heading into a very dangerous area (if the only way to lodge a claim against your internet provider is online, then they will know what you are doing).
I don't understand how they fail to recognize that ISPs will
a) see all of the sites you will visit and
b) many people can't choose between ISPs because there are only a few in their area
It seems that for the GOP, as long as there is profit for corporations, they are willing to give up the privacy of the voters.
How is this different than the telephone company eavesdropping on your calls and selling the information gained to marketing companies?
We can vote alright, but what we are actually voting for is the person who is the most convincing liar and makes the most appealing "promises", without them being obligated in any way to actually implement their promises once elected.
As I see it, individuals only have a couple of effective ways to influence politics:
- withdraw your financial participation in things you don't agree with. This is extremely difficult: most people are not willing to endure the sacrifices necessary, and we're not coordinated to do it together. If everyone (or even 10%) canceled their Internet service, cable service, or whatever, for 1 month, THAT would get attention. If 10% were willing to lower their standard of living in order to reduce the government's tax take by 10%, that would get attention.
- regular individuals need to donate more money to politicians than corporations and wealthy individuals. It's a sickening thought to me that the only way to get public servants to actually serve the public is to bribe them, but obviously that works.
Edit: The rule was intended to stop existing practices or prevent companies from doing this in the future.
Can someone give people like me a "5 things to fight back" list?
I don't think Thiel has that kind of juice. Maybe Bannon does but it really seems like this would have to be an issue he cares deeply about personally, and it's hard to think of one where there's much space between the president and the modern GOP.
What makes you think the guy who describes his preferred business model as being to establish a monopoly would do that?
Who will be the first to start a "privacy-driven" ISP with marked up prices?
Damned if you do, damned if you don't.
(2) HTTPS makes a limited amount of sense. Even on encrypted connections, ISPs know which domains you visit. In some situations they may also be able to MITM your certificates and read the data you transmit.
(3) Any semblance of privacy now requires either a reputable VPN or TOR.
I'm not for this at all vote at all, and I'm not sure why Trump supporters are, I'm just trying to come up with a good argument for why it's worse.
And the reason ISP is much worse is your ISP is your gateway to the internet. Everything you do can be tracked and it's directly tied to your personal identity. You can't avoid being tracked by it by using a different site. Want a list of cat owners in San Fransico? Comcast has that list and they'll sell it to you, names, addresses, etc. How about a list of people who have googled 'given medical condition' in the tri-state area? How about a list of names and addresses of people who are interested in gay sex in Utah? How about who have visited Ashley Madison in Washington, DC?
In theory you can opt out of FBGOOGZON tracking.
Those who prefer a smaller government and objected the the FCC'c huge over reach that this rule was part of.
The eff is an obvious choice and I'm a member and have been for almost 20 years.
In my mind the big thing is people that vote for republicans don't fully understand that they are voting for non-privacy, pro-business, and really, pro-military. Granted, there are some dems that can fall into this trap and 9/11 pretty much ensnared all but a few into the reactionary mindset. This actually took true visionaries and leaders to overcome; few and far between.
So, really, local debate has to happen in the red states where these majorities are elected. This is a long uphill battle, but the message of "mega-corporations are not your friends" has to be paramount and when you're not earning tech salaries, we are part of the problem.
For coal miners and all these higher profile ise cases, we need to re-connect with the human and community level. That's the disconnect right there; it's easier to get angry about 'the swamp' than it is to try to take your own local municipality into your own hands or figuring out how to stay local vs. state.
California, New York, etc - these aren't the battlegrounds. They are the future. The majority of their population already agrees on global warming, privacy, tech, etc. They're one step behind bitcoin/ethereum/altcoins globalization.
But for somone in W. Varginia that's a coal miner that has been laid off (a big Trump talking point), these things matter On a massive level.
So there's our schism - how can we provide a forward thinking, longer term vision that helps the common citizenry? In my mind, everything this repubican extremist 'president' represents are big interests and reducing their unfettered access to unlimited profits, regardless of what that means.
Your (what's left of it) privacy and whatever else is fair game.
I'd advise to (of course) moving to tor, vm's and seriously, cryptocurrencies. Currency is a great way to start hacking back towards 1:1, person:person transactions which leads to a less decentralized money system.
And, If course, money underpins pretty much all us entrepreneurs do.
So, we do have options. :-/ These options include vpn, tor, cryptocurrencies, ethereum, etc.
Edit: mobile spelling corrections.
Your "will be" should be changed to "has been." The data selling was possible (100% guaranteed to be occurring rather) prior to Trump's election for example.
I can't pretend I know what it's like to be a general layperson about tech, but my base instinct is that this issue of Internet privacy protections is much more salient to the average person than SOPA. Yet even as a follower of politics, I barely heard about this until last week when the Senate voted on it.
I can think of a couple of factors:
1. Internet giants advocated heavily against SOPA. Those same companies have less incentive to argue against selling user data, even though selling data at the ISP level is, to me, substantially different than at the website/service level.
2. So much political energy and attention has been spent on the Trump Administration, particularly on the recent push to repeal Obamacare. IIRC, even though SOPA didn't get much media coverage until around the week of the blackout, it wasn't competing with anything quite as big as this past week's vote on Obamacare (nevermind the other issues surrounding the executive branch).
[0] https://www.congress.gov/bill/112th-congress/senate-bill/968...
[1] https://www.congress.gov/bill/112th-congress/house-bill/3261...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_SOPA_and_PIPA
Edit: Worth pointing out the Senate vote from last week, in which no Republican broke ranks in a 50-48 vote. 2 Republicans were not present (edit: I originally wrote "abstained"), including Sen. Rand Paul who is listed as a co-sponsor:
https://projects.propublica.org/represent/votes/115/senate/1...
https://www.flake.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases...
Adopted last November, published in December, parts went into effect in January and parts earlier this month, with more parts due to go into effect in June and December.
edit: note Senate....
Then again, the vote to change the rules to disallow filibusters could itself be filibustered.
But, the Senate, despite all that, could (on motion) declare the filibuster unconstitutional, and only require a simple majority vote to affirm it.
Man, our Congress is so broken.
Source: 2nd paragraph of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filibuster_in_the_United_State...
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/28/congress_approves_s...
"Now, the really big question is: can your ISPs see the content of your online interactions? Can it read your emails? Can it read your search results? Can it store and search through the words you typed into a webpage?
And the answer is: yes, sometimes.
If the website you visit is not secured with HTTPS – meaning that any data between you and the website is encrypted – then your ISP can see exactly what you are doing."
Read the article for suggestions on how to protect yourself.
Also read: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/03/28/so_my_isp_can_now_se...