
Why one Republican voted to kill privacy rules: “Nobody has to use the Internet” - AdmiralAsshat
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/04/dont-like-privacy-violations-dont-use-the-internet-gop-lawmaker-says/
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AndrewKemendo
The problem is he's not technically wrong, but he is holistically wrong.

You also don't have to use electricity, gas, water utilities or hospitals.
However our society has progressed to the point that these things are
considered basic services now if you want to live inside of common society.

I'm not sure if he is intentionally ignoring this aspect or really is too
disconnected with reality.

I say that because frankly I know a lot of people his age who don't use the
internet directly at all.

I know even recently there was a exec that was being groomed for a major
position at a top 5 tech co, who didn't use internet directly and had his
secretary print out emails for him, that he would mark up and she would
transcribe in response. It's more common than you think in the govt.

~~~
jquery
Context: He said this sarcastically in response to someone saying "nobody has
to use Facebook."

I'd argue that the number of choices of social-network and search engines
choices are about as meaningful as the number of ISP choices. If anything,
Facebook/Google have a larger monopoly (by percentage) than most (or all)
ISPs.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
I watched the video. It didn't sound sarcastic at all.

------
blunte
Someday these old fuckers who are ruining our world will die. Then maybe there
will be thoughtful progress of humanity.

~~~
dagw
But then you will be the old fucker completely out of touch with the strange
stuff the kids are into these days and the lame things they worry about.

~~~
xyzzy4
Not necessarily. Technological progress seems to be slowing.

~~~
jacquesm
> Technological progress seems to be slowing.

Comedy gold. Really?

How long ago since you thought 'mail' was something a guy carried for you?

How long ago since you thought a phone should be wired to a wall?

How long before that when you thought a computer was something that banks
used?

~~~
ouid
How long since the last time a major technology was invented that changed how
you live your day to day? When that happened, how long had it been since the
previous one?

I bet the first number is bigger than the second number.

~~~
raisedbyninjas
1\. The smartphone (iphone 2007)

2\. The internet (early 1990s)

~~~
jacquesm
The internet, 70's & 80's, the web, 90's.

It's fairly well established that inventing things gets easier when there are
other things that you can build on top of.

------
noir_lord
Ask 1000 randomly chosen people 10 basic questions about a subject, work out
the average score.

If a Congressperson/Senate member can't get a better score than the average of
the 1000 on that subject then they don't get to vote on the legislation.

(I'm not serious..but sometimes I wonder).

I call it the "Yogi Test" (smarter than the average bear).

~~~
chadgeidel
Sounds good. Until you try to define "1000 random people" and "10 basic
questions". :-)

~~~
Dylan16807
The nice thing about a percentile score is that you have enormous leeway in
how difficult the questions are.

And it's not that hard to find people that are mostly not experts on a
subject.

------
nickbauman
People who have Internet access are increasingly using it to get or keep their
jobs. They don't really have a choice.

Consider the following analogy:

Nobody has to use a car. They can just stay home and be unemployed. Especially
in rural Wisconsin. So when carmakers install tracking devices into that car,
they can use your movement data as a way to make money. If you don't like it,
walk or take a bus.

------
nebabyte
Nobody _has_ to have any information either

I mean hey, nobody _has_ to participate in a democracy. It'd be so much more
convenient if I could just, like, dictate what would happen, and they had no
way of looking it up

The internet's such a fad I'm just so sick of hearing about, let's just let
companies buy it up and kill it off

~~~
pmoriarty
Nobody has to read, so it's ok if your library reading records be made public.

Nobody has to get medical treatment, so your medical records should be made
public.

Nobody has to have sex, so there should be a publically accessible camera in
your bedroom.

~~~
nebabyte
Now why can't more of my constituents be like this upstanding citizen.

------
vermontdevil
This is the same guy who wrote the Patroit Act.

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

Fuck him.

------
EGreg
Conservatives have one hammer for every nail: the free market. The invisible
hand always does better than government. Deregulation is always good. (There
are three exceptions to this with many conservatives: free trade is bad, army
is unlimited good, fossil fuels must be subsidized).

That's what leads to such statements. It doesn't matter how ridiculous a
corner they will paint themselves into. They can deny that basic supply and
demand exists. When backed into a corner they just exclaim "socialism doesn't
work! Look at USSR!"

(And then together with neocons proceed to sanction and undermine more regimes
to make sure they are right.)

It's kind of a religious conviction. Capitalism is the unofficial religion of
the USA the same as Islam is in Saudi Arabia. Don't believe me? Try to say
publicly that capitalism has faults and your criticism of capitalism itself
would be instantly deflected to something else, or else you will be quickly
ostracized.

This religion will soon come up against the hard facts of automation causing
demand for human labor to drop, undermining the conviction that wages will
always be the primary way for people to get money.

~~~
digitalzombie
> the free market.

The only libertarians on the senate was two republicans and they both voted to
sell online privacy. I guess that's real free market there.

------
tabeth
So many of the problems surrounding this would be fixed with:

1\. More representatives per capita

2\. Shorter (and limited max) term limits.

There's nothing wrong with what he's saying here. The problem is that his
view, though representative of _some_ portion of the population, are over-
represented due to the lack of representation in general.

------
colmvp
So as automation and AI are predicted (and to some extent, already have) to
displace a lot of jobs over the next few decades, I feel that making the
internet more accessible is America's best interest, as it may be able to make
education MORE accessible through free online resources like Khan Academy,
YouTube videos, downloadable textbooks, online study groups (Slack, forums),
so that the average American has a better chance at switching careers, along
with being more informed about things like the environment, their personal
health (physical and mental), and government resources in their local area
that might help them.

In my city (and I'm sure it's the same around the U.S.), libraries are packed
because they provide internet and a safe, free space to learn.

------
nostromo
I'm confused about what data the ISPs actually have access to.

It seems over 90% of my online activity is now https. That means they have
access to very little that can be useful to an advertiser. (I suppose they
have my DNS lookups, but it's trivial to change DNS to a company you trust.)

It's interesting how universally hated ISPs are. Google and Facebook, from a
technical standpoint, are much scarier in what they know about everyone on the
internet. Yet few people seem to care that they use our browsing and search
data to target us to advertisers.

~~~
openasocket
> I suppose they have my DNS lookups, but it's trivial to change DNS to a
> company you trust

That won't solve it, there's still what's called "passive DNS". With passive
DNS someone between you and the internet (in this case your ISP) simply tags
and stores all DNS packets it sees before forwarding them to wherever they're
supposed to go. From that they can determine which domains you are resolving
even if you aren't using their resolver. They can also block DNS requests, and
even send you their own responses. That last part doesn't matter as much as
you'd think: they can't just redirect you to an Ad server because they
wouldn't be able to authenticate the SSL connection.

I should also add that this DNS snooping has legitimate and ethical uses. A
big reason to do this is to deal with malware. Often malware uses certain
domain names as their command and control server. If this malware has spread
far and wide and could affect a lot of your customers, you can black hole the
domain name so that, if you have the malware and it tries to resolve
mycommandandcontrolserver.biz, the ISP intercepts the request and send back an
NXDOMAIN, or have it resolve to 0.0.0.0, or resolve it to a particular server
that simply closes every connection it gets so you can figure out which
customers are affected and contact them.

They can also get the hostname for https connections the initial SSL
connection sends the hostname in plaintext (called SNI). But getting that
requires reconstructing the TCP stream for connections in real time, and
that's just not very practical at ISP scale.

------
thetli8
Honestly, banning lobbying from Congress might solve the multitudes of issues
we're handed down from the government.

[http://www.theverge.com/2017/3/29/15100620/congress-fcc-
isp-...](http://www.theverge.com/2017/3/29/15100620/congress-fcc-isp-web-
browsing-privacy-fire-sale)

I'd suggest that companies, individuals and interest groups file suggestions
(similar to amicus curiae) if they want their voices heard. Congress shouldn't
be influenced by outside money.

~~~
pgwhalen
What exactly does banning lobbying look like in a representative democracy?

------
ams6110
This is probably mostly an age thing. I mostly agree that "nobody has to use
the internet" because for most of my life there was no internet, at least no
consumer internet, and I have personal experience living a happy, productive
life quite well without it.

Many people over 60 today really don't use the internet much if at all.

A younger person who has never known life without a mobile device and
ubiquitous internet might well have a different view.

~~~
vijayr
_This is probably mostly an age thing_

Argued that way, nobody has to use phone, digital camera and a whole bunch of
other things. Part of the job of being a law maker is to understand the
needs/interests of all people, not just old people because the lawmaker
happens to be old. A sensible person would find out the usage of the internet,
its impact, privacy etc before making (even though he himself might not use) a
decision.

I don't drink, but that doesn't mean I should vote down any bill that has
anything to do with alcohol without understanding what it is about, right?

~~~
rayiner
> Argued that way, nobody has to use phone, digital camera and a whole bunch
> of other things. Part of the job of being a law maker is to understand the
> needs/interests of all people, not just old people because the lawmaker
> happens to be old

It's not just because the lawmaker happens to be old, but also because voters
happen to be old. He's a Congressman, so he has to get reelected every other
year. Half of those elections will be midterm elections. Almost twice as many
voters will be 65+ as will be 18-29.

------
bwb
What the republican party has become makes me sad for any real conservative :(

~~~
jopsen
Yeah, thanks Obama!

He is the one who made it so hard for republicans to both: A) Disagree with
Obama, and B) Have a reasonable political position.

Sarcasm may occur... :)

