Yes sir, those "small government", caring Republicans, from last week, in the Senate, to yesterday, in the House, just sold all of us down the river, ladies and gentlemen. If you aren't aware of it all, you should be.
House Republicans just voted to let your internet provider sell your browsing history without your permission
Republicans Just Voted to Let Internet Service Providers Sell Your Browsing History
A bit from one of the articles.
Soon every mistake you’ve ever made online will not only be available to your internet service provider (ISP) — it will be available to any corporation or foreign government who wants to see those mistakes.
Thanks to last week’s US Senate decision (update March 28: and today’s House decision), ISPs can sell your entire web browsing history to literally anyone without your permission. The only rules that prevented this are all being repealed, and won’t be reinstated any time soon (it would take an act of congress).
You might be wondering: who benefits from repealing these rules? Other than those four monopoly ISPs that control America’s “last mile” of internet cables and cell towers?
No one. No one else benefits in any way. Our privacy (and our nation’s security) have been diminished so a few mega-corporations can make a little extra cash.
In other words, these politicians — who have received millions of dollars in campaign contributions from the ISPs for decades — have sold us out.
Mind you, Republicans did this. Republican Senators, last week, and the members of the House of Representatives this week, yesterday. "Small government" Republicans.
More from the article:
...every single senator who voted in favor of overturning these privacy rules was a Republican. Every single Democrat and Independent senator voted against this CRA resolution. The final vote was 50–48, with two Republicans voting against the resolution, and another two choosing not to vote.
So just please, no one try to tell me there's no difference in the political parties.
Please.
And what does this mean to all of us? To you and me? This:
According to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, there are at least five creepy things the FCC regulations would have made illegal. But thanks to the Senate, ISPs can now continue doing these things as much as they want, and it will probably be years before we can do anything to stop them.
- Sell your browsing history to basically any corporation or government that wants to buy it
- Hijack your searches and share them with third parties
- Monitor all your traffic by injecting their own malware-filled ads into the websites you visit
- Stuff undetectable, un-deletable tracking cookies into all of your non-encrypted traffic
- Pre-install software on phones that will monitor all traffic — even HTTPS traffic — before it gets encrypted. AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile have already done this with some Android phones.
How to encrypt your entire life in less than an hour
Protect yourself against the big ISPs.
Then, come election time, vote. And vote against Republicans. It's our only protection.
