Public outrage against Republican rollback of ISP privacy rules

President Trump and Republicans in Congress rolled back FCC rules that required ISPs to get consumer permission before sharing online data – and pretty much everyone is angry about losing online privacy protection. A YouGov poll found that the 80 percent of Democrats and 75 percent of Republicans wanted Trump to veto the repeal of online privacy.

Mining your online activity for profit is big business. Revenue from digital advertising for the first half of 2016 totaled $32.7 billion. More than $15 billion of that total came from data related to online search and $7 billion came from social media data. But the now-defunct FCC privacy rules did not protect consumers’ use of website and social media.

Congress and states should take action now to adopt comprehensive privacy rules that protect all online activity. Whether you’re visiting websites, searching Google maps, posting on Facebook, or watching Netflix online, you should have the right to determine whether you want that information shared with others. Privacy rules that apply only to one side of the Internet – ISPs – but not to websites and social media is not enough.

To be sure, Trump and Republicans sold out your privacy protections that apply to ISPs. Now it’s time to press forward for comprehensive privacy rules that protect consumer data from all companies – whether they are Internet service providers or websites like Google and Facebook. It’s an idea whose time has come.

Links:

Republicans’ rollback of broadband privacy is hideously unpopular (Vox, Apr. 4, 2017)

Here’s why Google fights so hard to get your data (Speed Matters, Nov. 7, 2016)

Rep. Pallone calls for legislation that empowers the FTC to protect consumer privacy (Speed Matters, Oct. 6, 2016)