.How the Republicans Sold Your Privacy to Internet Providers - The New York Times:
The bill not only gives cable companies and wireless providers free rein to do what they like with your browsing history, shopping habits, your location and other information gleaned from your online activity, but it would also prevent the Federal Communications Commission from ever again establishing similar consumer privacy protections.
The bill is an effort by the F.C.C.’s new Republican majority and congressional Republicans to overturn a simple but vitally important concept — namely that the information that goes over a network belongs to you as the consumer, not to the network hired to carry it. It’s an old idea: For decades, in both Republican and Democratic administrations, federal rules have protected the privacy of the information in a telephone call. In 2016, the F.C.C., which I led as chairman under President Barack Obama, extended those same protections to the Internet.
Well the very idea of it boils my blood. "information that goes over a network belongs to you as the consumer, not to the network hired to carry it. It’s an old idea." Indeed it is an old idea. It started with the founding of the country and the early postal service envisioned as a democratizing communications system -that would become the envy of the world. (And we were then not consumers then but citizens.) If you want to read up on it I very much recommend a book I have just finished, Prologue to a Farce: Communication and Democracy in America. I warn you it is a sad sad book.
And then there is the much lauded democratizing potential of the Internet....Blah, blah, blah. A very good idea, but just hasn't worked out that way in real life politics largely controlled by corporate plutocracy. Very recently there was good piece in the Nation, basically an momentarily premature obituary on "Net Neutrality" . Trumps new FCC chair who is an obvious hatchet man for the industry plans to kill his own agency. Not a new idea. The gist of the NYT piece is that congress took power away from the FCC so they can not regulate in our interest. True enough but this is a big overstatement on the true nature of that agency since it's inception.
One article that predicted what was going to happen Tom Wheeler: Trump, GOP Plan To 'Modernize' The FCC A 'Fraud' in "Tech Dirt" goes very deep on the political scuttlebutt side but it is full of great references Like who are these companies and what do they mean by competition and modernization?
The end result of this "modernization"? Less oversight than ever for industry giants AT&T, Comcast, Verizon and Charter. Given these companies' growing size, long and undeniable track record of anti-competitive behavior and outright fraud, what could possibly go wrong?.....and we wouldn't want to go to Net Neutrality's funeral and memorial with out a few word to say and maybe some facts. Read it.
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