
Campaign to Buy Browsing Histories of Politicians Who Passed Anti-Privacy Law - techpp
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/17/03/29/1717201/activist-starts-a-campaign-to-buy-and-publish-browsing-histories-of-politicians-who-passed-anti-privacy-law
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angryasian
I think this is a little premature until we know what exactly can be purchased
and when. As of right now throwing money at this person seems like just giving
him free money. Who is this person and is he trustworthy... what's he going to
do with the money if he can't buy it ? Does he even know how to buy the data ?

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rabboRubble
> Who is this person and is he trustworthy... what's he going to do with the
> money if he can't buy it ? Does he even know how to buy the data ?

You've documented exactly why we should buy Congressional data. Let's make it
painfully obvious that the data can be "weaponized" against them, their loved
ones, and business partners by the unscrupulous and the unstable.

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krapp
Public scrutiny of the internet habits of our elected officials probably isn't
a bad idea anyway.

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forgotmysn
I would add to this list Sen. Rand Paul, who co-sponsored the bill, but
skipped the vote.

edit: link to donate to the gofundme campaign to purchase the browser
histories
[https://www.gofundme.com/searchinternethistory](https://www.gofundme.com/searchinternethistory)

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forgotmysn
edit #2: turns out im a dummy

[https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170329/13234837037/no-
yo...](https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20170329/13234837037/no-you-cant-buy-
congresss-internet-data-anyone-elses.shtml)

~~~
Zooper
Instead of an editorial techdirt article, do you have the law's text where the
behavior is expressly forbidden? One of these things matters, the other has no
bearing on reality.

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forgotmysn
I'm not sure your question has any bearing on reality?

There is no law that explicitly states that selling individualized internet
search history is illegal. However, (and you would know this if you read the
techdirt article) internet advertising marketplaces don't function that way.
It's not that it's illegal, its just inefficient. The advertisers don't need
to know WHO you are to know that their ad is relevant to you.

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xenophonf
I think that the only way to really drive home the importance of digital
privacy rights is to craft a bit of targeted advertising that _only_ your
senator or representative sees and that follows them _everywhere_ online.

~~~
Buttons840
Why only senators? It would be an effective way to teach the public too. "Hi,
<full name>. I know you live at <address>, and that <other facts>. If you care
about privacy go to eff.org (or some other organization)."

You might also include a message along the lines of "everyone knows this
information about you, it's just that we're the only one telling you that we
know".

~~~
kingbirdy
That's a great way to make the general public hate the EFF because they think
it's spying on them.

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vdnkh
Actual link:

[https://www.searchinternethistory.com/](https://www.searchinternethistory.com/)

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emjoes1
Can I just sell my data? I really don't care and not sure why everyone is
freaking out over this. I also believe most tech muggles don't care either.
Also is not most of our data sold by data brokers currently - like your
physical address. Not sure what I should worry about with my browsing data...

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FullMtlAlcoholc
> Can I just sell my data?

That's the real issue here IMO. It blows my mind that Comcast et al thinks
it's unfair that Google, Facebook, etc get to profit off of user data while
they can not. I get that most politicians don't have the slightest
understanding of tech, but how hard is it to understand that Google, Facebook
et al get this access because they provide a service for nearly free with the
cost being your personal information.

Comcast, Verizon, etc. sells a service that consumers purchase. Now they are
increasing the costs by profiting off of our personal data while giving users
nothing in return. Ironically, this gives them an unfair advantage. These
corporate welfare queens don't have to compete by providing a service that I
would pay for with my personal information.

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frgtpsswrdlame
Except the data is cleaned of personal information, correct? The top comments
on the reddit thread of this issue are all about how this is impossible.

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snotrockets
It is easier to deanonimize data than one would imagine (the work on the
Netflix prize dataset comes to mind:
[http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/4531148/](http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/4531148/))

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ajmarsh
Maybe both the politicians and their staff. Some of these old Luddites have
never sent so much as an email in their entire life.

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jquery
Someone explain why I should fear ISPs more than Google? I can at use
Sonic.net for privacy. I can't realistically opt out of Google. The lines seem
arbitrary.

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angryasian
what.. this doesn't make any sense and I don't know what Google has anything
to do with this. Why can't you opt out of google ?

1\. ISP monitor all your internet traffic. Google can only have access to what
google services you opt in to use.

2\. At this time we don't know how the ISP's will sell your internet history
whether it be individual or in aggregate, but google doesn't sell your
information.

3\. I trust google's security more than ISPs

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Silhouette
Google don't just have access to what you opt in to use. They also have access
to whatever anyone else you communicate with effectively opts in to use on
your behalf. For example, even if you don't want to give Google any data at
all, there is a very high chance that they already have a lot of the emails
you send via one of the other parties, and a fair chance that you won't even
know it's happening unless you look at the MX records for their domain or
something along those lines.

This is, IMHO, one of the biggest unresolved ethical issues with data
protection and privacy today. On the one hand, it would be a great burden on
society to stop everyone from using any third party services for anything
involving personal data about someone else. On the other hand, when those
services are no longer neutral and will process any data they receive _for
other purposes_ without the informed consent of some of the data subjects,
that's a dubious practice at best. Another example is a social network's
mobile app uploading your phone's entire contacts list, and just like that
they've probably got a unique personal ID and a great deal of networking
information about everyone on that list.

~~~
angryasian
while i don't disagree, you still have the option of not responding. Also I
think what you mention is more of an issue with integrating systems with open
standards. The alternative is using a closed system that only belongs to one
vendor or revising the open standard to support privacy

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BusySkillFool
Let them burn in a pit of there own dirty history!

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burkemw3
Something I read long ago (and can't find) was that privacy is a relatively
recent part of humanity. In the past, we lived in small groups where everyone
knew each other very well.

Now we live in big groups, which provide pseudo-nymity.

One of the things I keep coming back to in my head is a way to democratize the
information collected about us. Right now, certain "people" (including
companies and government organizations) have lots of access to lots of data
and the rest of the population has very little access to that information.

Does privacy matter as much if we share observations as humans likely did in
the past?

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rm_-rf_slash
Difference is these memories are no longer forgotten. Embarrassing stories may
fall by the wayside back in the day, but think, your grandchildren will be
able to look up your cringey college Facebook posts long after you've passed
away.

~~~
agentultra
You didn't have the kind of authoritarian powers we have with the ability to
archive information about people.

We know what the statsi archives did... now there's unprecedented power to
repeat that mistake at a larger scale.

