GOP Wants To Prevent The FCC From Protecting Broadband Consumer Privacy
from the who-needs-privacy-anyway dept
Back in 2017 the FCC tried to pass some very basic privacy protections for broadband access. The rules simply demanded transparency as to what kind of data your ISP collects and sells. They also mandated that the trafficking of sensitive financial data by telecoms require the opt in consent of consumers.
Telecom giants like AT&T and Comcast didn’t much like that. So, in perfect synchronicity with the GOP, they first successfully painted the proposal as extremist, and then killed the rules with a simple majority vote via the Congressional Review Act. Not only did that vote kill the rules, the CRA prohibits the regulatory agency in question from revisiting the same rules ever again.
It was an obvious act of corruption and regulatory capture by a Republican party consistently in perfect lockstep with predatory and unpopular telecom monopolies. A relationship the party never has to genuinely take ownership of thanks to press outlets often incapable of calling out obvious corruption.
Fast forward to 2023 and the FCC is considering new privacy protections that would require ISPs be more transparent about privacy breaches. And, once again, Republicans like Ted Cruz are very upset about it.
While the CRA prohibits a regulator from exploring the same rule, it’s less legally clear if the FCC can embrace specific aspects of the bigger rule. So that’s what the FCC is going to try, according to agency boss Jessica Rosenworcel:
“By its terms, the CRA does not prohibit the adoption of a rule that is merely substantially similar to a limited portion of the disapproved rule or one that is the same as individual pieces of the disapproved rule.”
I’m not sure that’s going to work out, but I think it’s important for the FCC to try and thread the needle anyway just to see if there’s traction here. An FTC report from 2021 highlights how telecom giants spy on consumers, collect oceans of data, then — despite constant industry denials of this fact — turn around and sell some form of access to those datasets to a broad assortment of middlemen and nitwits.
Lost in the debate over whether this will succeed in courts will be the fact that this whole mess was caused by corruption we’re seemingly incapable of doing anything about. The telecom industry has the majority of Congress — and the entirety of the GOP — in its back pocket. We’ve normalized the fact an entire party that works in lockstep with telecom monopolists to routinely make your service shittier and more expensive.
The GOP has been endlessly busy trying to create a future where regulators have zero meaningful authority to hold giant companies accountable for anything. In telecom, this is all driven by the delusion that once you remove oversight of companies like Comcast and AT&T, amazing “free market” synergies fill the vacuum, unleashing amazing new benefits and synergies everywhere you look.
Of course, that’s manufactured delusion. Without competition or regulatory oversight, companies like Comcast and AT&T simply double down on all of their worst impulses. And the GOP fully supports that future, whether it’s the demolition of net neutrality, high broadband prices due to monopolization, a lack of consumer privacy, or your family getting ripped off by bullshit fees and surcharges.
But despite the widespread, bipartisan unpopularity of U.S. telecom giants, the GOP never has to truly own its policy decisions on this front. In part because they’ve now got their own propaganda-focused press sure to frame any attempt to hold corporations accountable as government overreach. But because the “both sides,” view from nowhere mainstream press is incapable of calling out obvious corruption.
To make matters worse, there are several upcoming Supreme Court rulings that will be specifically designed to undermine already shaky U.S. regulatory authority further. And here, too, the press hasn’t really explained the stakes to the American public adequately. What could possibly go wrong?
Filed Under: broadband, congressional review act, fcc, high speed internet, privacy, ted cruz, telecom
Comments on “GOP Wants To Prevent The FCC From Protecting Broadband Consumer Privacy”
I wonder why?
“press outlets often incapable of calling out obvious corruption”
I wonder why? Could it be because media consolidation has created a landscape where many news outlets are either owned by telecomms (Comcast owns NBC and AT&T owns CNN) or are completely reliant on them to reach their audience?
Re:
This is part of it. The other part is that news in general has seen a race to the bottom in order to keep costs low, so reporters who are actual experts in anything at all are no longer employed by major news outlets.
For evidence of this, look at any tech-oriented reporting in the Times or Post; it’s uniformly terrible and uninformed.
So the major news outlets only focus on the things that politicians spotlight and want them to focus on, and the graft behind your internet options aren’t among those topics.
Re: consider
The LOSS of advertising they generate.
And the reporters CHANNEL losing it.
the Federal Government domestic surveillance system of the entire US population dwarfs anything the Telecoms could ever do on privacy invasion.
yet somehow you expect the Feds to sincerely value and diligently protect our privacy ???
Democrats and Republicans just easily renewed outrageous sections of the FISA act, permitting warrantless collection of electronic communications.
NSA routinely collects all domestic communications and widely shares them within government.
FCC, Congress, and all Presidents never object to this Orwellian privacy invasion.
Re:
But spying on the people is the government’s job. Private companies shouldn’t be doing it.
Re: Why not both?
You’re right that the federal government is guilty of egregious unconstitutional domestic (and of course international as well) surveillance. We should stand against that. That the government is also guilty of terrible behavior should not prevent us from also pointing out and doing what little (if anything) we can do against other actors. If the government doing bad things were to prevent us from standing against corporate or individual bad behaviors, well we might as well just give up all together.
'Privacy is important! For very specific companies at very specific times.'
This of course being the same GOP that’s in a perpetual meltdown these days over social media and how the likes of TikTok and Facebook are dire threats to the privacy of their users and must be ‘regulated’ into ‘compliance’…
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
GOP is a cancer. And Dems are handing the US to the cancer with the relentless support towards the ongoing genocide.
Sadly, Dems are also an illness even though it doesn’t kill the host. The US is so screwed…
And before Israel cheerleaders use the “but Hamas” card just don’t. Nothing justifies what Israel is doing. Unless you believe it’s ok to carpet bomb the USA because there are nazis and white supremacists in the country, then you are coherent.
Re:
While I do agree with you about Israel and Palestine, I flagged your comment because it was extremely irrelevant to the discussion. Stay on target…
Re: Re:
I agree it’s not the focus. I preempted comments that didn’t materialize, thankfully. Can’t say the flag wasn’t deserved :/
Still, Dems are doing exactly that, handing the election to the GOP for some idiocy. Sad times ahead for the US.
I read about a process somewhere...
I dunno if the GOP recognizes they’re in the second stage of the process…
Here is how [political] platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.
Donald Trump is the living, breathing, cartoonishly dumb, and evil personification of the third stage…
The problem is, “when someone tells you who they are, believe them.”
Wow, the GOP wanting something to not function properly. Where have I heard this one before?
Easy fix
Opt out would be better for my view, but ignorant stupid people fail to read what they agree to so the nanny state steps in to step on smart people, er, protect the stupid.
As long as they don’t restrict the ability to agree to targeted advertising that helps me support companies I utilise; I’m all for protecting the stupid idiots from being more stupid.