
US Senate votes to undo FCC internet privacy rules - daegloe
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2017/03/23/congress-is-poised-to-undo-landmark-rules-covering-your-internet-privacy/
======
DannyBee
So, it's weird. I was on reddit this morning, and there seemed to be a bit of
astroturfing going on about this.

The comments i replied to, which all claimed "this was a power grab by the fcc
from the ftc" (which is ajit's talking points), are now deleted. In fact,
every account i can find that said similar things is now deleted.
[https://www.reddit.com/user/danberlin/comments/](https://www.reddit.com/user/danberlin/comments/)
(click on context for any of them).

In any case, for the curious, here's the history here:

The FTC historically did privacy for ISP's.

FTC has no section 5 authority (IE to make those kinds of rules) for common
carriers. It's specifically exempted by the FTC act, and has been for 90
years. This has been upheld in court. See [https://iapp.org/news/a/the-att-v-
ftc-common-carrier-ruling-...](https://iapp.org/news/a/the-att-v-ftc-common-
carrier-ruling-and-how-it-changes-common-carrier-regulation/)

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.

Now the claim is "well, the FTC should be doing it, it was just a power grab
by the FCC". But that's not really accurate. The power grab, if any, was
reclassifying them as common carriers. Once that was done, they pretty much
had to regulate them because the FTC can't.

Because the FTC _still_ doesn't have authority to regulate them, _and_ they
are still classed as common carriers, there is a void.

Now, it may actually be _better_ for the FTC to be regulating them. But it's
definitely the case that, for the moment, no privacy rules will apply to them
because the FTC _can 't_ regulate them until the FTC's common carrier
exemption is repealed.

See Maureen(an FTC commissioner)'s speech here:
[https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/public_statements...](https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/public_statements/893473/151204plispeech1.pdf)

Note, the speech is out of date a bit, because since then, the 9th circuit
court ruled that the exemption is status based, not activity based, despite
what the FTC wants.

~~~
smsm42
I wish the original article contained any of this background instead of usual
"they canceled the rules to protect your privacy and to defend you from
hackers, because they are evil of course".

I hate when they do that - replace actual content of the legislation being
talked about with genetic description like "aimed to protect you from
hackers". Clearly there's a controversy between whether this protection is
appropriate or not. I expect from reporting to tell me what controversy is
about and let me decide which side I like, not to shove a pre-manufactured
opinion down my throat. I've read the article and I still have no idea what
the actual disagreement is about. But at least from the comment above I now
know the background of what's going on.

~~~
unityByFreedom
> I expect from reporting to tell me what controversy is about and let me
> decide which side I like, not to shove a pre-manufactured opinion down my
> throat

I've yet to identify a news website that (a) doesn't do this and (b) writes
enough about topics I care about.

I think we'll get back to quality reporting where we can rely on certain
publishers, but we're not there yet.

Simply put, the internet gave the world the opportunity to create too much
noise and it's going to be awhile until the dust settles or the fog clears.

------
haswell
> _The resolution also would bar the FCC from ever enacting similar consumer
> protections. It now heads to the House._

This is honestly the most frightening thing to me. Even if prevailing opinions
change, they can't bring these regulations back in the future? This
seems...majorly problematic.

Edit: The Ars article [1] expands on this a bit further:

> _The Senate today used its power under the Congressional Review Act to
> ensure that the FCC rulemaking "shall have no force or effect" and to
> prevent the FCC from issuing similar regulations in the future._

I'm not well versed in the Congressional Review Act and what its invocation
means here, but I've seen commentary to the effect of "The FCC won’t be able
to try again, even if Congress gets back on board".

[1] [https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/senate-votes-
to-...](https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/03/senate-votes-to-let-isps-
sell-your-web-browsing-history-to-advertisers/)

~~~
PTRFRLL
> Once a rule is thus repealed, the Congressional Review Act (CRA) also
> prohibits the reissuing of the rule in substantially the same form or the
> issuing of a new rule that is substantially the same, "unless the reissued
> or new rule is specifically authorized by a law enacted after the date of
> the joint resolution disapproving the original rule" (5 U.S. Code §
> 801(b)(2))

The CRA allows the rules to be recreated if given explicit authorization from
a law by congress. So they can be put back in place, just not as easily.

~~~
haswell
That's encouraging at least. Obviously this doesn't make the ruling any less
serious, but it doesn't sound as permanent as most of these articles make it
sound.

~~~
voxic11
It's as permanent as you can make law without amending the Constitution.

~~~
DrScump
[EDIT]: (deleted)

Sorry, I misread that s/he was talking about the _bill_ rather than the
administrative rule change that happened first.

~~~
rhino369
No, Congress is removing the FCC's authority to make rules on this topic. It
would take an act of congress to give it back.

~~~
DrScump
Sorry, I misread that this was talking about the _bill_ rather than the
administrative _rule change_ that happened first.

------
cheath
Conservatism in the US hypothetically is supposed to encompass the
preservation of people's privacy from the interference from others - including
by the government, individuals, and companies.

But I think it's very telling that when companies interests and individuals
interests conflict, then the favor recently has been towards the "freedom" of
the companies at the expense of the individual. It's a shame.

~~~
komali2
"Conservatives" in the US should not be confused with the actual definition of
"conservative." Nor should the republican party be confused with people that
care about Republican ideals.

~~~
TillE
It's not just label confusion, it's an active contradiction in the principles
most of them constantly espouse vs. the actual policies they enact.

But it is a little silly to have a "republican" party in countries (USA,
France) where the monarchy is long gone.

~~~
humanrebar
American conservatism is conserving a different political history than you
find in Europe. "Way back when", America was a constitutional republic with a
distinct federal government with distinct separation of powers. That's the
"good old days" that are conserved in America.

So it's not "silly" except that the same word "conservative" means different
things in different contexts. Though that's true of the words "liberal",
"democratic", "federal", and "republican" for that matter.

------
blitmap
Well this is kinda fucking disgusting. I had previously thought lawmakers may
simply not understand the issue they're ruling on - which is too common. I
don't understand why this needs to remove the ability for the FCC to do it's
job. To curtail it's ability to enact similar privacy protections in the
future.

How could anyone in good conscience think this is good for the people?

Dear god fuck it all.

(let's not even consider how an ISP analyzing traffic to sell would have an
unfair advantage to other advertising agents like Facebook)

~~~
diogenescynic
>How could anyone in good conscience think this is good for the people?

They don't. The politicians who voted for this only represent the interests of
the lobbyists and financial backers who 'donated/bribed' them during their
campaign. Politicians don't care about the will of the people at all, several
studies have shown this.

Before America can accomplish much of anything--we need real and substantial
campaign finance reform. Too many corporations are able to influence elections
and it's not good for democracy. I would think after this last election,
democrats could run on this as a national security issue, if they were smart
but no one has ever accused them of that.

~~~
Arizhel
I'm not sure campaign finance reform would do much. Look what we saw in this
last election; regular everyday people (generally the non-urban ones) have
poor education and don't understand the issues. All they care about is the
"Mexicans", abortion, guns, which bathroom a tiny number of people use, etc.,
and they'll vote for politicians who tell them what they want to hear on these
issues. These pols can easily convince their constituents that things like
this new law are good, because it'll reduce "unnecessary regulation" that
"strangles companies" and "reduces competition" and "drives prices up". The
voters are too short-sighted and stupid to remember all this and notice when,
in fact, prices just go up and privacy protections disappear as a result of
laws like this, so the pols won't be held accountable.

Campaign finance reform won't help this kind of thing. Just look at Dave Brat
in Virginia; he won over Mark Cantor, despite Cantor being a long-time
incumbent with a huge war chest and lobbyist backing and Brat being a little-
known Tea Party candidate. Or just look at Trump: how much did he spend on
campaigning? Virtually nothing. Hillary was the one spending obscene amounts
of money on campaigning, and she was horribly unpopular and lost.

The problem isn't money, it's the voters.

~~~
MarcScott
But without the huge donations and constant lobbying, wouldn't the politicians
be more inclined to enact legislation that favored their voters over corporate
interests.

~~~
rayiner
No, because the corporate interests control all the jobs and that's what
voters care about more than anything.

------
temp-dude-87844
While I strongly disagree with the outcome, let's be very precise on what was
actually done.

Today the Senate passed, with 50R in support, 46D and 2I opposing, 2R
(including Rand Paul, a listed co-sponsor) abstaining, a very brief resolution
[1]. The wording of the resolution is reproduced below:

 _JOINT RESOLUTION

Providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United
States Code, of the rule submitted by the Federal Communications Commission
relating to "Protecting the Privacy of Customers of Broadband and Other
Telecommunications Services".

Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of
America in Congress assembled, That Congress disapproves the rule submitted by
the Federal Communications Commission relating to "Protecting the Privacy of
Customers of Broadband and Other Telecommunications Services" (81 Fed. Reg.
87274 (December 2, 2016)), and such rule shall have no force or effect."_

This undoes the 73-page publication [2] 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.

I sympathize with what's at stake, but the victorious party's Senate issues a
one-line rebuke of a sweeping ruleset coming out of the very tail end of the
other party's lame duck session. While I support the Democratic position on
this issue, I can't help but feel that the timing was a deliberate provocation
timed to make the Republicans look bad. As entirely expected [3], this FCC
ruling was indeed rebuked by the Senate and it now goes to the House, but the
current FCC chair would've probably discontinued it under his leadership
anyway.

[1]
[https://www.congress.gov/115/bills/sjres34/BILLS-115sjres34p...](https://www.congress.gov/115/bills/sjres34/BILLS-115sjres34pcs.xml)
[2]
[https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2016/12/02/2016-28...](https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2016/12/02/2016-28006/protecting-
the-privacy-of-customers-of-broadband-and-other-telecommunications-services)
[3]
[https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/115-2017/s94](https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/115-2017/s94)

~~~
endoplasmic5
This rebuke rests on the fallacy that because this was allowed before, it's
acceptable -- which it simply is not. The status quo is terrible and that
means that continuing with the status quo is terrible. The new rules were
meant to belatedly restrain the ISPs. They have done invasive things and only
a naif would think they'll stop now: see
[https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/03/five-creepy-things-
you...](https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/03/five-creepy-things-your-isp-
could-do-if-congress-repeals-fccs-privacy-protections) (in fact, they're
reportedly developing technology to allow broader collection and packaging of
data.)

"the very tail end of the other party's lame duck session" \-- not lame duck,
this was in October, when Democrats were rather hopeful of electoral gains.

"the current FCC chair would've probably discontinued it under his leadership
anyway." And in that case that would have been the news. This isn't about the
horse race and whose-team-is-winning! It's about whether this situation is
right or wrong.

------
seibelj
I was sick of having to install VPN software on all of my devices, and
couldn't on some of the older ones, so I put the VPN inside the router itself.
Plug for one of my side businesses
[https://easyvpnrouter.com/](https://easyvpnrouter.com/)

You can do it yourself, but it's a big hassle, maybe someone finds this
useful.

~~~
corndoge
Off-topicness aside, I see no proof that you are not selling spyware in a box

~~~
Fede_V
Right, especially if you are selling it as something to maintain privacy, I'd
like to see the source code.

~~~
seibelj
It uses vanilla OpenWRT. The app to configure it is just react native and
speaks OpenWRT API's. The only thing I could open source are 1) How I flash
the router and configure it, which is a hassle and I'm not going to share, and
2) The source code to the react native app, which you can decompile and look
at if you want.

If you want to see the open source of the router software itself, go to
[https://openwrt.org/](https://openwrt.org/) and dive in

------
jzl
If you aren't already using a non-logging vpn for all traffic, all the more
reason to switch now. Probably preaching to the choir here. But it's so simple
to setup and use one, much less intimidating than most people realize who have
never used a VPN before. Once you start using one you practically feel naked
whenever connecting without it, even at home.

~~~
penagwin
Is there an adequate (or easy?) solutions for gamers? I'm ok with a bit of
extra latency (30ms -> 50ms lets say), but I'm not at all ok with that for say
Counter Strike.

~~~
jethro_tell
There are several ways to do this. The best way would be to use a router that
lets you route. Create the VPN tunnel as always on. Set routing policy based
on destination. Gameserver.com goes out the ISP direct, everything else goes
out the VPN. You can add additional tunnels and routs as needed but the
building block is having a real router that lets you set routes. Personally, I
have a static VPN to work, a tor tunnel, VPN to personal offsite
infrastructure and an everything else tunnel. I set routes so my traffic goes
the the right place automatically, for myself and anyone else in my house.

~~~
komali2
How do you figure out what to set routing policy for? You say gameserver.com,
but how do I figure that out for CSGO vs Overwatch? What about games where
you're connected to a friend's computer hosting a match, such as 7 days to die
or potentially minecraft?

~~~
jethro_tell
You basically have to make a white list. It's not an easy thing to do and I
don't know any way to do it dynamically.

Sometimes, the only way to make a whitelist is to see what's not working and
add it to the list.

------
orbitingpluto
I haven't seen any mention of COPPA here. I would think that selling a child's
internet habits would constitute a violation .

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Online_Privacy_Pr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children%27s_Online_Privacy_Protection_Act)

------
pdelbarba
How much does HTTPS circumvent this? In theory the ISP would only know what
domain you were on, but not what content you were viewing, correct?

~~~
tribune
Sure, but still, which domains a person uses can say a lot about them. Not to
mention ISPs have access to a wealth of other information about their
customers including physical location (down to the address, they bill them)

~~~
__jal
Unless you have a friendly local ISP, I strongly suggest using a third-party
DNS provider as well. OpenDNS is lovely for this, or piggy-backing on one that
you know actually returns valid results (and doesn't sell the logs) is good.

If you're already a Google user, use theirs - they are still part of the
surveillance-entertainment complex, but at least they don't lie about DNS.

~~~
exabrial
You'll also need to use dnscurve. Setup an RPI as your local DNS resolver
using dnscurve and have your router hand out your rpi as your lan's DNS
resolver. None of this matters if you rent your router from your isp

~~~
edraferi
I need a tutorial on setting up privacy protections against an ISP. Any
recommendations?

~~~
komali2
No doubt, seems like there's a lot of opportunity to set up some clear-cut
guides for dummies like me to protect ourselves. Kinda surprised there isn't a
general guide from a VPN provider, would be a great opportunity to both upsell
their services and promote whatever their staff (probably) care a great deal
about (internet privacy).

------
jps359
If you knew someone in particular worked as a member of the CIA/NSA or as a
politician, couldn't you (possibly unknowingly) sell their personal browsing
history to a foreign adversary (and give that adversary leverage over the
individual)?

~~~
wfo
Or someone who is a sysadmin and works on the power grid, or someone who is a
technician at a huge datacenter, or someone with admin rights on the corporate
network of Boeing, Lockheed, or, or...

------
shmerl
As if we don't have enough snooping going on. Now ISPs want to sell behavioral
profiles. In a sense they are worse than Facebook and others who hoard such
profiles.

In the case of the later, users at least have a choice to dump FB and use
privacy respectful services. And FB collects what users do in regards to FB.
With ISPs, not only they sit on the main pipe and can do deep inspection of
all your traffic, users most often have no choice (at best a workaround like
VPN, which isn't free and degrades performance). Crooks who voted for this
must be same ones who advocate for police state.

~~~
rev12
> In a sense they are worse than Facebook and others who hoard such profiles.

In _every_ sense this is worse than Facebook and others, especially
considering your second paragraph.

------
Jamieee
Was looking at setting up a PiHole to kill ads on my home network anyway -
maybe it's time to just get a better router that I can do that on and hook up
to my VPN provider in one box. Anyone got any suggestions?

~~~
givinguflac
I've had good luck blocking ads on my Asus RT-AC87U running MerlinWRT. It can
block ads by installing AB-solution and also supports VPN both to your network
from elsewhere and for routing your entire WAN through VPN if desired.
[https://www.ab-solution.info](https://www.ab-solution.info) and
[http://asuswrt.lostrealm.ca](http://asuswrt.lostrealm.ca)

~~~
PTRFRLL
+1 for MerlinWRT, it's great. Easy to install and let's you do some awesome
things vs. stock ASUS firmware. The OpenVPN client is pretty powerful too.
Using policy-based routing, you can send some traffic to the VPN and other to
your normal WAN.

------
splitrocket
Time to buy a VPN service from a country that's reasonably sane.

I'll gladly sacrifice money and latency for privacy.

------
daymannightman
ISPs have historically been granted certain protections due to the fact that
they are simply providing the the delivery mechanism. Once they start
inspecting and logging user data I believe those protections should be
removed. What about HIPPA or other protections for PII? They are no longer
simply a service provider if they log my medical details when I go to use my
health care provider's website.

------
dv_dt
Someone should start a project to gather and share as much information on the
lawmakers as possible within the new legal bounds of what is now allowed.

------
gradi3nt
So if I ask my ISP if they are selling my data do they have to admit it? Or
can they now do it in secret?

~~~
0xfeba
They'll say they are always striving to provide the best consumer experience.

AKA they would probably sell your dog to you if they thought they could get
away with it.

------
gibrown
So does this mean I'll soon be able to go and buy the internet history of all
Republican lawmakers? Cause that sounds fun...

~~~
coding123
That's what I was thinking too. I mean they're making it legal, so...

------
revelation
This isn't even about privacy only, at stake are also things like
"supercookies" inserted by ISPs.

It's quite unbelievable that you could try sending a bitstring over IP and
have the ISP change that, _legally_. It's like USPS ripping up mail and
occasionally adding some advertisements or rewriting your text.

------
mirimir
"Money doesn't talk, it swears."

"It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)", by Bob Dylan

So everyone should use VPNs. One can allow direct non-VPN access to particular
sites, such as Netflix, in firewall rules.

------
ajennings
Here is Senator Flake's explanation:

[https://www.flake.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2017/3/op-
ed-f...](https://www.flake.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2017/3/op-ed-for-the-
wall-street-journal)

He says he just wants to go back to "the FTC’s successful sensitivity-based
framework".

Is he wrong? Is it spin?

Jeff Flake is my senator and I honestly like him on so many issues. I'm very
confused by this and trying to get to the bottom of it.

~~~
extra88
Flake's article is full of spin. The FCC declaring ISPs common carriers wasn't
about "stealing" regulatory control over privacy from the FTC, it was the only
way they could make headway on net neutrality. If Congress wanted to give
responsibility for this back to the FTC, that's what they should be voting on,
this doesn't do that. Using the rollback is just lazy.

Edit: Oh, and Telecom Services was the largest donor industry to Flake's
leadership PAC (not necessarily corruption, donors give money to politicians
who already agree with them too).

[https://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?type=P&c...](https://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/summary.php?type=P&cid=n00009573&newMem=N&cycle=2016)

------
root_axis
I wonder how ISPs would react to a script/app that generates a ton of DNS
noise.

~~~
acomjean
M-x spook

still works on some versions of emacs (the default mac one anyway).

It was designed to throw off email surveillance, dated terms though. More
details here:
[https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Ma...](https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/emacs/Mail-
Amusements.html)

------
alistproducer2
I made an Ask HN related to this earlier that got no traction [0]. Due to this
regulation repeal, I don't consider VPN's optional anymore. I asked people to
share their VPN setups. I'd like to have my router route my traffic through
one.

0:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13942059](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13942059)

------
awqrre
Employers will start purchasing your browsing history if this passes?

------
bleair
I think this could set an interesting change in motion.

Assuming ISPs start selling their costumer's browsing behaviors I imagine
we'll soon see a "marketplace" for selling of this style of information. This
could be a win for startups as now they will have an easy place to sell the
types of information they collect about users who have signed up for their
service.

It used to be a notion that "if you aren't paying for a service you are the
product being sold".

Now you can start to assume that your usage of a service or even any program
you install on your device will in effect result in information about you
being sold.

~~~
shostack
These marketplaces already exist via DMPs and data brokers like Axciom,
Neustar, etc.

There are cookie onboarding companies like LiveRamp, etc. that partner with
companies and apps to load their cookie on login, map it to a hashed email,
collect geo data, etc. and then resell that audience to these companies and
advertisers to target/retarget against.

A surprising amount of that happens behind the scenes in apps where you'd have
no reason to suspect they were doing that (the infamous "flashlight app
requesting tons of permissions" is one example), and no real way of auditing
it short of monitoring your traffic for calls to their servers.

I've heard rates around ~$8 CPM for each unique email-mapped user/mo (they pay
you monthly even if it is the same user in Month 1 and Month 2 because the
point is resetting the cookie that may have been previously wiped). Obviously
various factors impact that pricing.

Adobe is also making big moves in that marketplace space for their Marketing
Cloud [1].

[1]
[https://marketing.adobe.com/resources/help/en_US/aam/c_marke...](https://marketing.adobe.com/resources/help/en_US/aam/c_marketplace_buyer.html)

------
emehrkay
Imagine how valuable some users' history will be on the market. If I am an ISP
and I know that the Zuckerberg household uses my service, that could prove
very profitable for me.

------
mrfusion
Two days ago I was searching on Google for a model of car. About ten minutes
later I get an email from my bank about their car loans. Very creepy!

I guess we can expect worse than that now?

~~~
goodplay
Want to hear something creepier? I was looking to buy a car a couple of years
ago, and was checking out a bunch of car dealerships that were adjacent to
each other. Shortly after I decided to return home (or perhaps as I started to
leave the area, can't recall), I received a promotional SMS from my phone
carrier about special car deals.

People forgot why privacy is important and why keeping records is very
dangerous and shouldn't be carelessly, if at all, unless there is a genuine
need for it.

Unfortunately, and I resent having to say this, I think humanity will need a
new lesson before things can get better.

------
diminoten
Does anyone have a neutral explanation of what this is? Does this affect an
ISP's ability to pursue someone who is accused of IP piracy?

------
erkose
[https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere](https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere)

~~~
yborg
That does nothing for traffic analysis. Your ISP has the destinations for
everywhere you go online, that information over time is itself valuable.

~~~
m3ta
If someone is concerned with their ISP knowing the sites they visit, they can
use TOR or a VPN to re-route that traffic elsewhere.

There is no way to avoid this.

The way the internet works right now, someone at some point has to know which
server you want to connect to. It's your ISP or your VPN provider or the TOR
nodes you're connected to, or some other lesser-known program that obfuscates
your identity.

------
mrtron
Obfuscate usage by blasting random requests out. Use about 100x the data your
family normally uses.

~~~
acdha
It's hard to generate realistic data which can't be easily rejected with basic
statistical techniques, and that also runs into the other problem that most
large ISPs have or are introducing monthly quotas and traffic shaping. Most
people wouldn't run a service like this and the ones who do would likely stop
as soon as it interfered with their actual usage.

------
cgb223
> approve a joint resolution from Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) that would prevent
> the Federal Communications Commission's privacy rules from going into effect

So wait, are these new rules that would have gone into effect, or is this
repealing old existing rules?

~~~
DrScump
No effect until December 2017 at the _earliest_ (there are complex
notification requirements that may not be met by then).

------
makecheck
This simple pass/fail measurement really has to go. Bills can contain way,
way, way too much stuff and cause way too much damage to be simply accepted as
all or nothing.

What if bills could only implement 100% of what they say after receiving 100%
of the vote? And if a bill splits 50/50 (as this one roughly did), the rule
could be: tough, now you may only implement 50% of what you asked for; what
will that 50% be?

It should be obvious by now that the political party system tends to produce
results that consider approximately 2 viewpoints instead of those of 100
senators or a million constituents. And it should be equally obvious that the
election of representatives pretty much hands _four years_ worth of arbitrary
bills to the majority, counter-arguments be damned apparently.

~~~
umanwizard
The bill we're talking about was like two sentences long.

------
startupdiscuss
Prediction: built in VPN products like Opera's will grow in popularity.

~~~
shorttime
thanks for posting this, didn't realize it had it built in. Just enabled.

------
ianamartin
So much of this conversation has turned political that I'm going to write this
as a top-level comment instead of a response to any of the Republican/Democrat
comments.

We all want to perceive our political views as the result of deep, personal
thought--reflection on our own moral guidance, our own observations about the
world, our knowledge of the law. Or some combination of those things. We don't
want to think that our political views are determined by something as
arbitrary as where we grew up.

But I think that we are, in fact, shaped more by our environments than we want
to think we are. I grew up on a small farm in Texas. My parents happened to be
university professors, so I had access to decent education and placed some
value on the arts. In fact, I was a professional violinist for 20 years before
I got into software engineering and data science.

My working theory is based solely on my observations, and I haven't done a
study to try to support this theory, but I am working on getting the funding
to do such a study in a rigorous way.

It's this: the primary driver of political philosophy is access to property.
When you have access to cheap, functional property, you tend to lean
Republican. When you don't, you tend to lean Democrat.

The reasoning behind this is pretty simple. When you live in a place like
Texas, you don't really need other people's rules. If you don't like the rules
in your city, it's pretty cheap to go buy some land with little-to-no
oversight from anyone and live your life as you please, so long as you aren't
being really obnoxious.

So you have to drive 2 hours to work instead of an hour? No big deal. Your
freedom to live under your own rules is more important than that. Why would
anyone compromise on their way of doing things when it's so easy to not
compromise? It doesn't make any sense.

Contrast that to NYC, where I've been living for almost 2 years. Everything is
about compromise. Very few people can afford to just move to a place where no
one cares--for a variety of reasons. You can't live in that kind of a dense
population without accepting limitations to your freedoms. And you want those
limitations in place because people are jackasses. So you agree to curtail
what you are allowed to do so that you have some confidence that other people
are similarly curtailed. There's a sort of minimum viable level of human
decency that gets enforced.

If you think of personal freedom in the sense that it ends when it starts to
infringe on the personal freedom of another person, it makes sense that you
are going to have more of it if there's no one near you for 10 miles vs. your
next door neighbor living in what used to be the second toilet in your
apartment.

I don't see much of a conceptual problem with either attitude. I'm much
happier in NYC than I ever was in Texas. Texas just doesn't have a whole lot
to offer to a liberal, atheist, violinist, and software engineer.

What I see as a problem is that people are incapable of understanding the
different needs of different human situations and want to impose their own
ideas on populations they do not understand at all.

New Yorkers grow up riding the subway to school. They see all kinds of people
from all walks of life and all different races from a very young age. I didn't
even meet a black person until I was in college. New Yorkers don't understand
how the south can be so racist. I can understand it. I don't condone it at
all. But I can understand how it happens. We still have housing laws that
allow what's basically racial segregation in Texas and all across the South.

We have Senators and Supreme Court Justices from New York City who don't have
a clue about how utterly different things are 2,000 miles away trying to
enforce the compromises they absolutely need on the entire country. And
conversely, we have idiots from Texas pretending that places like NYC, LA, SF,
Chicago and other high-density populations just don't exist--pretending that
anyone who doesn't want to compromise is completely free to just go someplace
else.

Both sides of the aisle are completely fucked in the head. They are wrong.
There is no universal set of rules that make sense in both the context of
sparse population/cheap land/driving culture and dense population/expensive
land/walking or pub trans culture.

To bring it back to something relevant to this particular conversation, I
think you can apply this heuristic to the Senate, FCC, and FTC.

As parties, yes. Both of the big ones are owned by corporate interests. That's
clear. But they are owned by the ones they want to be owned by. The ones that
they think are in alignment with their political philosophy.

The Republican version of the story on privacy and net neutrality is that
everyone has space to move to something else if they don't like it. Let the
companies do what they want, and if users don't like it, they can go do
something else. Which would be reasonable if Republicans weren't already in
the pockets of all the major providers and have made it impossible for there
to be another place to "move" to, in terms of internet providers.

The Democrats did, unfortunately, almost nothing to protect users. The
Democrats are too willing to compromise to get something done.

In my opinion, it's the will/won't compromise that is fundamentally derived
from the geography of where you live that is driving our politics now,
including the politics of the internet. Republicans win because they don't
compromise. It's not in their vocabulary. Democrats lose because they are, by
nature, the compromise party.

In a perfect world, both sides would get out of their shells and try to
experience the places other people live. They would realize that one-size-
fits-all compromise legislation does not, in fact, work for everyone all the
time. And it can't really.

But there are some cases that affect everyone equally: bottom 1%, top 1%,
anything in between, the internet matters. This is one of the rare few
instances where Republicans and Democrats should be holding hands and applying
rules equally across the board.

Those rules should be in favor of privacy and neutrality. No compromise, no
matter where you are from or where your political philosophies came from. Net
Privacy should be absolute by law as should Neutrality from the providers.
That's all there is to it.

In the absence of that, I see a good market opportunity for a social network
like Facebook that is entirely encrypted and unscannable by the Intelligence
Community. Totally private. No ads. You pay a dollar a month for this. Your
data is yours, and you can leave at any time and take it with you in a
reasonable format.

I'm already working on that. Ping me if you are interested.

------
johnmurch
Someone needs to start publishing the web history of everyone who voted YES to
showcase the power/data ISPs will have.

------
abootstrapper
Should we open up our wifi routers to confuse the traffic signal? How bad of
an idea is that?

~~~
coolspot
-8 of -10

Very bad.

------
radley
Get ready for dark patterns 2.0 :(

------
intrasight
I'm gonna call this the "get your friends and family on an VPN" bill.

------
clwg
Does this apply only to the first hop or to anyone that packets route through?

------
teaneedz
When do we kill ad tech so that our data isn't as monetizeable?

------
davexunit
Every day there's a new reason to be ashamed to be American.

------
tracker1
Guess it's time to start using my VPN machine more...

------
LeicaLatte
VPNs are the new passwords.

------
api
Encrypt all the things.

~~~
cortesoft
Encryption does not solve this problem at all. They aren't selling the
CONTENTS of your traffic, they are selling the DESTINATIONS.

~~~
true_religion
Isn't some destination information encrypted under HTTPS?

The only thing that might leak is the final public IP address.

~~~
cortesoft
Only the path portion.... the dns name is passed unencrypted

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Name_Indication](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Name_Indication)

------
yeukhon
Who in the right mind would propose cutting EPA budget? This _current_
government. Who in the right mind would want to offer health care to fewer
Americans? This _current_ government.

With all the allegations and lying we read about this current administration,
there is no sanity neither at the White House nor on the Capital Hill. I never
like the fact Senate election is every six years. There should also be a fixed
term for all representatives and senators.

(Disclaimer: do not support Trump, but not Democrat / Republican, both parties
are dirty in their own way).

If one day voters are given a secure voting application they can vote on all
issues, it will be great.

~~~
bluejekyll
> (Disclaimer: do not support Trump, but not Democrat / Republican, both
> parties are dirty in their own way).

With current winner take all voting structures in the US, this isn't exactly
an option. Winner-take-all voting systems end up with only two parties,
because that is the only viable way to win.

What we need is ranked choice voting so that voters are not penalized for
supporting third and fourth options.

> If one day voters are given a secure voting application they can vote on all
> issues, it will be great.

I'm not sure I share your confidence in that. A representative government has
it's positives, such-as people who are dedicated to govern while we all work,
etc. And with only 50% turn out, or less, you'd get a skewed populous actually
voting on these things.

~~~
yeukhon
If we have the ability to vote (sort of electoral college), but giving
incentive to people to participate, perhaps we will see some more engagement.
Perhaps. I don't know, it's ideal.

Perhaps if their job is more about explaining and convincing people, and we
hold the keys voting, then perhaps the power will indeed back to us. Again,
ideal, I don't know how effective it will ever be.

------
noobermin
This should serve as a reminder that a) elections matter and b) "both sides do
it" is utterly false.

~~~
mixedCase
>"both sides do it" is utterly false.

So Obama stopped the NSA mass collection program during its administration?

~~~
0xfeba
No, but he pushed to implement net neutrality and the rules in question.

Sorry, I'd have to agree. "Both sides do it" is an easy platitude, but
Democrats aren't trying to teach the Bible in schools, that Evolution is a
lie, that Climate Change is a lie, that wealth trickles down, that more of the
"free market" can somehow solve our gigantic healthcare problem, that smoking
doesn't kill, that abortion is murder but somehow women who have one shouldn't
go to jail for it, that there's no such thing as a wall between church and
state, oh wait--Islam?! Yes there's definitely a wall between Islam and state;
that keeping guns regulation free makes us all safer, the list goes on.

I'd agree the left has some problems and they do the same emotional
manipulating just to get votes. But they also just happen to be manipulating
people about issues that are mostly factually supported.

------
notmarkus
Breakdown of party affiliation and vote

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

([https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_...](https://www.senate.gov/legislative/LIS/roll_call_lists/roll_call_vote_cfm.cfm?congress=115&session=1&vote=00094))

~~~
dwaltrip
That's incredible. Our two party system is so clearly suboptimal, yet there
seems to be no strong agreement, or even leading ideas, on what we can do to
improve it.

One day... if we can overcome our deeply set ideologies...

~~~
pcmaffey
A 3rd party?

Even if they held only 4 seats, would change the entire political landscape.

~~~
neaden
Eh. Multiparty systems generally form a couple of coalitions anyway. It's not
really clear to me what the big difference would be if Rand Paul had an L next
to his name instead of an R.

~~~
pcmaffey
Perhaps he'd vote against instead of abstaining, since he wouldn't be beholden
to the big R?

Breaking the dialectic stranglehold the two party system has on this country
would be the benefit. Nothing's perfect, but multiparty gives the system more
diverse voices, more opportunity for people to choose and think for
themselves.

~~~
gpawl
voting with the minority is the same as abstaining.

------
coldpie
Don't forget to vote.

~~~
WalterSear
My vote doesn't count, and my party colluded to keep my presidential candidate
off the ballot.

~~~
givinguflac
The difference is all the trump voters that said the _exact_ same thing
actually went out and voted. Lo and behold, their votes counted.

~~~
WalterSear
I voted. Even though I knew, going into the booth, that my vote counted for
nothing, thanks to the electoral college.

Please stop pushing the false narrative that if only everyone voted, the
kleptocracy would grind to a halt. It's culturally entrenched at this point.

~~~
coldpie
If maybe 1 or 2% of people in swing states who thought like you decided to
vote instead of deciding not to vote, the outcome may have been different.

You are one voice in three hundred million. So is everybody else. Please vote.

~~~
WalterSear
Utterly irrelevant. My vote won't count more either way. I have no control
over swing state voters.

If maybe there weren't swing states, the outcome would have been different.
The system is set up this way for a reason - so that people like you can tell
people like me that if they only voted, things would be fixed. Maybe they
would, but, like I said, my vote doesn't count, so I can't really vote for it,
can I? :)

~~~
morganvachon
You've said the same thing in three different comments in this thread, and I
understand why you feel that way. Let me ask you this: Did you add your name
to the petition to end the electoral college and support a more balanced and
fair voting system? I did, because even though I feel strongly that every vote
counts, it's a reality of the US system that some votes count more than
others.

There has to be a better way to run this "democracy" we were born into, and
that change has to start with us; the entrenched politicians won't dare change
it on their own.

~~~
WalterSear
Which one? There have been a bunch. Sure, I've signed them. I also give money.
And I've helped with trying to get campaign finance reform on the state
ballot, which was then shut down by legislature.

Entrenched politicians aren't going to change things on their own, but it's a
false to assume that that means they are going to change things for anyone who
can't threaten their hegemony.

My state is not a swing state. My representatives are both solidly entrenched
and also on the take. In terms of federal issues, my vote will never count
here.

~~~
morganvachon
> _My representatives are both solidly entrenched and also on the take._

So get the word out in your community and change that fact. If you want
change, be the spark.

------
godmodus
Forgive them father, they know not what they do.

------
oksawe
but but Hillary's emails. ugh

------
exabrial
Be sure to go read the actual regulations before subscribing to the rhetoric,
there's more than one guilty party here.

Once again though, we the people lose and the Democrats/Republicans​ win.

~~~
givinguflac
The vote was 54-50, how the hell did the Democrats win?? The vote was almost
100% on party lines. Seems to me the Republicans have been all about this and
the Democrats against it. I'm not in either party - but saying they are the
same is just absurd.

Edit: Sorry, it's 50-48, even closer. Here's the list of cosponsors, not a
single D. [https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-joint-
re...](https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-joint-
resolution/34/cosponsors)

10 Repeating flawed logic to yourself does not make it true. 20 GOTO10.

~~~
criley2
You see this way too much, apathetic cynics will reply to anything political
with the lazy and ignorant: "Democrats = Republicans, we all lose"

They put 0 effort into their analysis, they're just rote repeating a cynics
trope that makes them feel smart and superior to the process.

It's difficult, after all, to educate yourself on the issues and respect the
differences between the parties. It's difficult and complicated and messy to
dig into the details and realize the differences.

Why do the work? It's far easier to be a cool hipster cynic and rote repeat
out the standard script: "Democrats and Republicans are two sides of the same
party" "There's no differences"

