
Protesters raise more than $200K to buy Congress’s browsing histories - conversar
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/03/30/protesters-raise-more-than-200000-to-buy-congresss-web-histories-theyre-likely-in-for-a-surprise/?tid=sm_tw&utm_term=.b96221c134f1
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TheRealDunkirk
First, the article says that ISP's will sell user data to the "highest
bidder." This is precisely the opposite of the proper characterization.
Rather, they'll sell to anyone and everyone who gives them money for it.

Second, although the bill -- very surprisingly -- seems to have NOT exempted
members of Congress from the law, I'm really doubting that Comcast, et. al.,
will include such data in their sales. The article says that ISP's will
anonymize the data, and I certainly expect them to try, but it's been well
proven that given just a piece or two of personally-identifying information
can unravel this sort of thing, so I expect them to scrub particular
subscribers from their data entirely, specifically so that mega-stars can't
sue them, or members of Congress aren't embarrassed to the point of actually
writing real privacy laws. That would make the situation objectively worse for
them.

So, no, no one is going to be able to buy congressional browsing histories. I
would imagine that Comcast is explaining all of this to the fence-sitting
Senators right now.

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snsr
There were no "fence-sitting" Senators for this vote - all voting Republicans
wanted to remove privacy protections. All Democratic and Independent Senators
voted to keep privacy protections in place.

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dogma1138
The Senate is 52R, 46D, 2I, there were 2 abstentions during the Vote so there
was some fence sitting at least on the R side, and they've decided to chick
out completely.

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extra88
The two non-voting senators were Republicans. One was Rand Paul who co-
sponsored the bill, apparently there's some tradition of not voting for your
own bill (when there are votes to spare). The other one, Isakson, is
recovering from surgery and not in D.C. to vote.

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heurist
Don't waste your money donating to joke causes, donate it to the politicians
running against the representatives who voted for this.

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ericcumbee
When I first saw this I thought they were talking about making a Freedom of
Information Act request

