Thread: Your browsing history for sale? White House won’t comment on Trump’s intent to sign

Your browsing history for sale? White House won’t comment on Trump’s intent to sign bill eroding Internet privacy rules

Hunter Walker National Correspondent
Yahoo News March 29, 2017
Comment

WASHINGTON — White House press secretary Sean Spicer indicated President Trump plans to sign a bill that would wipe out some of the Federal Communications Commission’s Internet privacy protections, but declined to discuss the reasons for supporting the legislation at his daily briefing on Wednesday. The legislation, which was sent to Trump by Congress on Tuesday, would eliminate protections that barred Internet service providers from monitoring their customers’ behavior online and selling that information, which could include browsing history, use of apps, Social Security numbers and location information.

Yahoo News asked Spicer if Trump plans to sign the bill and whether the president thinks it benefits anyone other than Internet companies and executives. Spicer pointed to a statement of administration policy issued by the White House on Tuesday that said Trump “strongly supports” the bill, but he declined to comment further.

“The House and Senate have just passed that. When they enroll it, then we will have further updates on that,” Spicer said of the legislation, adding, “I believe we have a statement of administration policy on that bill out, and when we have further updates on a signing ceremony, I will let you know.”

The protections affected by the bill were adopted by the FCC last October and were set to take effect at the end of this year. Republican FCC commissioners opposed the regulations, which were supported by online privacy advocates. The bill to eliminate the safeguards passed both the House and Senate on party-line votes.

Yahoo News pressed Spicer and asked whether the White House is concerned that allowing this personal information to be collected and sold could create a risk of the data being used for “nefarious purposes,” including “hostile nations potentially looking at … what congressmen are browsing online.” Spicer repeated that the administration supports the bill and declined to answer further.

“As I mentioned, we have a statement of administration policy on that bill,” said Spicer. “We will have further updates and, when we do sign it, I’m sure we’ll have further details on why.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/your-brow...181117390.html

Senate Votes to Let ISPs Sell Your Data Without Consent


House Votes in Favor of Letting ISPs Sell Your Browsing History

Wow this is some sick crap! Shame on every lawmaker, including Trump if he signs it, that supports the selling of everyone's online behavior information.

W

Isn't it a little odd that the Trump administration won't tell us why he supports this ludicrous law before signing it? How ironic, he's concerned about his own privacy but wants to weaken our privacy to benefit the corporate world!

This is why so many Democrats hate Republicans these days. They refuse to pass the bill to fix Obamacare but boy oh boy they'll sell US out on the internet in a DC Second. I really hope Trump decides to veto this bill. It should be vetoed.

Originally Posted by Judy

This is why so many Democrats hate Republicans these days. They refuse to pass the bill to fix Obamacare but boy oh boy they'll sell US out on the internet in a DC Second. I really hope Trump decides to veto this bill. It should be vetoed.

We have to admit there are no Democrats and no Republicans. They are all on the same team - and it's not our team.

This is just another of the many things this last election brought to light.

It sure looks that way.

You can’t buy Congress’ web history — stop trying
35

That’s not how any of this works

by Russell Brandom@russellbrandom Mar 29, 2017, 6:40pm EDT



On the heels of Congress’ recent rollback of the FCC’s privacy rules, some web-goers had a clever idea: why not buy Congress’ web history?

The privacy rules were set to protect against service providers like Comcast and Verizon using customer web-browsing data for marketing purposes. Now that the rules are gone, there’s nothing stopping those providers from using your browsing data for targeted advertising.

TO BE CLEAR, YOU CAN’T DO THIS

The move has enraged web privacy advocates, and a new crop of GoFundMe campaigns (including one campaignlaunched by Supernatural star Misha Collins) has seized on an unexpected method of revenge: buying politicians’ web histories one by one and publishing them for all to see. One campaign describes it this way:

Thanks to the Senate for passing S.J.Res 34 , now your Internet history can be bought.

I plan on purchasing the Internet histories of all legislators, congressmen, executives, and their families and make them easily searchable at searchinternethistory.com.

Everything from their medical, pornographic, to their financial and infidelity.

Anything they have looked at, searched for, or visited on the Internet will now be available for everyone to comb through.

Help me raise money to buy the histories of those who took away your right to privacy for just thousands of dollars from telephone and ISPs. Your private data will be bought and sold to marketing companies, law enforcement.

Let's turn the tables. Let's buy THEIR history and make it available.

To be clear, you can’t do this. Just because carriers are allowed to market against data doesn’t mean they’re allowed to sell individual web histories. The campaigns seem well-intentioned, but that’s just not how it works.


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In fact, what the campaigns describe would be illegal no matter what the FCC does. The Telecommunications Act explicitly prohibits the sharing of “individually identifiable” customer information except under very specific circumstances. It’s much more permissive when it comes to “aggregate” customer information, which is where things get squishier and the FCC rules become more important. We could argue all day about whether a targeted ad is individually identifiable or not, but if you’re paying Verizon to find out which sites Paul Ryan visited last month, that’s pretty clearly individual information, and pretty clearly illegal to sell.

If you want to get really clever, the Wiretap Act also makes it illegal to divulge the contents of electronic communications without the parties’ consent, which arguably includes browsing history.

But we don’t even need to get that far, because even if it weren’t illegal, carriers would never offer a service that unmasked all the gross and horrible things their customers do online. Targeted ads can be creepy, but they’re not that creepy, and every major network has robust safeguards in place to prevent you from working back to a single person’s web history.

None of this means that the recent privacy rollback isn’t a problem. It really will encourage more data collection and more aggressive ad targeting by service providers, and leave customers with few ways to escape. Aggregate data can still be invasive, as modern web advertising demonstrates over and over. It’s a fight worth having! But that’s a far cry from buying individual web histories.

In the meantime, the two biggest campaigns have collectively raised nearly $140,000 for the purchase of web histories that will never go up for sale. It’s anyone’s guess where the money will end up.

http://www.theverge.com/2017/3/29/15...ternet-privacy

There are a few reasons why I don't think this makes much difference. The ISPs may decide that promising that they won't share users accesses is a good selling point and won't do it. Users can easily circumvent it by using a proxy server or the tor browser. Although the current law in the USA may prevent an ISP from collecting this information there is no protection against any other computer in the path from collecting the information.

Fri Mar 31, 2017 | 3:09pm EDT

Major internet providers say will not sell customer browsing histories

By David Shepardson | WASHINGTON

Comcast Corp, Verizon Communications Inc and AT&T Inc said Friday they would not sell customers’ individual internet browsing information, days after the U.S. Congress approved legislation reversing Obama administration era internet privacy rules.

The bill would repeal regulations adopted in October by the Federal Communications Commission under former President Barack Obama requiring internet service providers to do more to protect customers' privacy than websites like Alphabet Inc's Google or Facebook Inc.

The easing of restrictions has sparked growing anger on social media sites.

"We do not sell our broadband customers’ individual web browsing history. We did not do it before the FCC’s rules were adopted, and we have no plans to do so," said Gerard Lewis, Comcast's chief privacy officer.

He added Comcast is revising its privacy policy to make more clear that "we do not sell our customers’ individual web browsing information to third parties."

Verizon does not sell personal web browsing histories and has no plans to do so in the future, said spokesman Richard Young.

Verizon privacy officer Karen Zacharia said in a blog post Friday the company has two programs that use customer browsing data. One allows marketers to access "de-identified information to determine which customers fit into groups that advertisers are trying to reach" while the other "provides aggregate insights that might be useful for advertisers and other businesses."

Republicans in Congress Tuesday narrowly passed the repeal of the rules with no Democratic support and over the objections of privacy advocates.

The vote was a win for internet providers such as AT&T Inc, Comcast and Verizon. Websites are governed by a less restrictive set of privacy rules.

The White House said Wednesday that President Donald Trump plans to sign the repeal of the rules, which had not taken effect.

Under the rules, internet providers would have needed to obtain consumer consent before using precise geolocation, financial information, health information, children's information and web browsing history for advertising and marketing. Websites do not need the same affirmative consent.

Some in Congress suggested providers would begin selling personal data to the highest bidder, while others vowed to raise money to buy browsing histories of Republicans.

AT&T says in its privacy statement it "will not sell your personal information to anyone, for any purpose. Period." In a blog post Friday, AT&T said it would not change those policies after Trump signs the repeal.

Websites and internet service providers do use and sell aggregated customer data to advertisers. Republicans say the rules unfairly would give websites the ability to harvest more data than internet providers.

Trade group USTelecom CEO Jonathan Spalter said in an op-ed Friday for website Axios that individual "browser history is already being aggregated and sold to advertising networks - by virtually every site you visit on the internet."

This week, 46 Senate Democrats urged Trump not to sign the bill, arguing most Americans "believe that their private information should be just that."

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-us...-idUSKBN1722D6