Internet privacy rules removed by Congress
Internet providers will not be required to ask permission to sell customers’ browsing habits, including medical information, shopping habits and even pornography preferences after Congress voted to roll back Obama-era regulations.
The House of Representatives voted 215 to 205 in favour of eliminating restrictions of internet service providers (ISP) and their ability to sell their customer’s information on Tuesday. The protections were planned to be enacted by the end of 2017 and would have forced ISPs to get permission from their customers before selling their internet browsing and app habits to advertisers.
The vote was largely bipartisan, with those in favour being exclusively Republican. However, several Republican lawmakers crossed over to vote against eliminating the privacy measures.
Last Thursday, a Senate vote set the stage for the House of Representatives to send the bill to President Donald Trump’s desk after they voted exclusively on party lines against the measures.
The Senate voted 50-48 to reverse the rules in a win for AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon.
The planned protections were proposed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and would have prevented ISPs and broadband providers from selling information, including where customers bank, shop, browse, their political views and even sexual orientation.
Those in favor of eliminating the protection measures have claimed that preventing ISPs from requiring consumer consent for customer information will eliminate competition among providers.
In a press release, Senator Jeff Flake (R-Arizona) defended rolling back the protections, saying the FCC’s privacy policy “has the potential to limit consumer choice, stifle innovation, and jeopardize data security by destabilizing the internet ecosystem.”
Supporters of the FCC regulations believe the repeal will only benefit broadband providers.
“Instead of making the industry more competitive, what this bill wants to do is give these four or five ISPs even more power,” Representative Ro Khanna (D-California) told The Guardian.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to protecting privacy on the internet, released a statement saying “should President Donald Trump sign S.J. Res. 34 into law, big Internet providers will be given new powers to harvest your personal information in extraordinarily creepy ways.”
For internet users who want to protect their privacy from ISPs, the options are slim going forward. Some may choose to utilize a virtual private network (VPN), a frequently paid service that routes all internet traffic through one server not directly connected to the user. However, many sites like Netflix try to ban VPN users from utilizing their services.
Others may move over to using Tor, a more complex server that could leave users open to malicious servers.
Repealing the FCC’s regulations is not a done deal, yet. President Trump has yet to sign off on SJ Res 34. However the White House said on Tuesday that the Trump administration strongly supports the bill.
The White House in its statement said internet providers would need to obtain affirmative “opt-in” consent from consumers to use and share certain information, but noted that websites are not required to get the same consent. “This results in rules that apply very different regulatory regimes based on the identity of the online actor,” the White House said.
Websites are governed by a less restrictive set of privacy rules overseen by the Federal Trade Commission.
The American Civil Liberties Union, which opposes the measure, said companies “should not be able to use and sell the sensitive data they collect from you without your permission.”
The Internet & Television Association said the rules would “deny consumers consistent privacy protection online and violate competitive neutrality.”
The EFF’s Jeremy Gillula told the Guardian, “I think we’d try to convince President Trump that signing a bill that helps big corporate interests by eliminating Americans’ privacy and weakening their cybersecurity isn’t exactly ‘draining the swamp.’”
And while consumers can easily abandon sites whose privacy practices they don’t agree with, it is far more difficult to choose a different Internet provider.. Many Americans have a choice of only one or two broadband companies in their area, according to federal statistics.
For example, consumer advocates fear that Congress or the FCC’s new Republican chairman, Ajit Pai, may seek to roll back the agency’s rules on net neutrality — the policy that forbids Internet providers from blocking content they don’t like or charging websites a fee to reach consumers over faster Internet speeds. Industry analysts said Tuesday that the FCC is also poised to deregulate the $40 billion-a-year industry for data connections used by hospitals, universities and ATMs.
Tuesday’s vote is a sign that Internet providers will be treated more permissively at a time when conservatives control the executive and legislative branches. That could be a boon for companies such as Verizon and Comcast as they race to become online advertising giants.
Internet providers have historically made their money from selling access to the Web. But now these providers are looking to increase their revenue by tapping the vast troves of data their customers generate as they visit websites, watch videos, read information and download apps
The Federal Trade Commission does not have the authority to punish Internet providers that violate these guidelines. That is because of a rule that leaves oversight of those companies to the FCC
As a result, Tuesday’s vote may release Internet providers from the FCC’s privacy regulation, but the FTC would also be unable to enforce its own guidelines on the industry without new authority from Congress.
Fat chance.
Citations
https://www.rt.com/usa/382631-congress-vote-internet-privacy/
https://sg.news.yahoo.com/white-house-backs-repeal-broadband-184906982.html
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/house-sends-bill-rolling-back-internet-privacy-protections-to-trump/2017/03/28/db704ca4-13d5-11e7-9e4f-09aa75d3ec57_story.html?utm_term=.735628c07e02
Y_ 2 years, 10 months ago.
