Tuesday, March 28, 2017

Dan Newhouse and Cathy McMorris Rogers Sold You to Charter

From Tech Crunch's Taylor Hatmaker 5 hours ago:

Today in a 215-205 vote on Senate Joint Resolution 34 (H. Res. 230), the House voted to repeal broadband privacy regulations that the Obama administration’s FCC introduced in 2016. In a narrower vote than some expected, 15 Republicans broke rank to join the 190 Democrats who voted against the repeal. The FCC rules, designed to protect consumers, required ISPs to seek consent from their customers in order to share their sensitive private data (it’s worth noting that ISPs can collect it, either way).

Today’s vote is a blow to anyone who’d prefer not to put their browsing history on blast, and a major victory for advertisers hungry for all of the de-anonymized personal data that they can vacuum up and dole out. With Congress and the FCC squarely in the latter’s camp, consumers who value privacy — and really, we all should — are in for a rough ride.

The language of the joint resolution is as follows:
This joint resolution nullifies the rule submitted by the Federal Communications Commission entitled “Protecting the Privacy of Customers of Broadband and Other Telecommunications Services.” The rule published on December 2, 2016: (1) applies the customer privacy requirements of the Communications Act of 1934 to broadband Internet access service and other telecommunications services, (2) requires telecommunications carriers to inform customers about rights to opt in or opt out of the use or the sharing of their confidential information, (3) adopts data security and breach notification requirements, (4) prohibits broadband service offerings that are contingent on surrendering privacy rights, and (5) requires disclosures and affirmative consent when a broadband provider offers customers financial incentives in exchange for the provider’s right to use a customer’s confidential information.
The vote among Washington representatives looked like this:

Nay       D       DelBene, Suzan (WA 1st)
Nay       D       Larsen, Rick (WA 2nd)
Nay       R       Herrera Beutler, Jaime (WA 3rd)
Yea       R       Newhouse, Dan (WA 4th)
Yea       R       McMorris Rodgers, Cathy (WA 5th)

Nay       D       Kilmer, Derek (WA 6th)
Nay       D       Jayapal, Pramila (WA 7th)
Nay       R       Reichert, David (WA 8th)
Nay       D       Smith, Adam (WA 9th)
Nay       D       Heck, Denny (WA 10th)

"Hello, Charter? This is Dan. I voted 'Yea'. You're welcome.

I will call Dan Newhouse's office again tomorrow and tell him how disappointed I am in his vote. I'll also send him a postcard illustrating how I feel. What will you do?

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