The House of Representatives voted this week to repeal a law previously passed by the Obama administration, requiring Internet Service Providers to gain permission from users in order to access and share certain pieces of personal information with advertisers (via The Washington Post).
The law, which was approved last year prior to the Presidential election, limited what ISPs such as Verizon, AT&T and Comcast could do with sensitive data including user location, browsing history, and even their Social Security numbers. The law also required ISPs to strengthen protections against hackers and online data thieves, and would have officially gone into effect at the end of 2017.
Image via The Verge
The Republican majority House has now voted to repeal these measures, with critics of the previous law arguing that the move will allow ISPs to enter a level playing field -- and subsequently increase healthy competition in the targeted online advertising market -- with companies like Google and Facebook. With the repeal, ISPs will no longer need user consent to sell their data to marketers "and other companies that mine personal data." The vote ended with 215 in favor to 205 in opposition.
According to The Washington Post, the repeal is considered "the first salvo" in what is expected to turn into a "significant reworking" of rules and regulations regarding internet security and privacy under the Trump administration. The repeal goes so far as to include wording that aims to prevent the Federal Communications Commission -- which drafted the original law -- from issuing similar protections in the future.
Those in support of the original FCC protections argued that ISPs require strict regulations because they represent a much broader scope of access to user data, unlike search engines which only access a snapshot of a user's browsing data. If a user is unhappy with a site's data access they can decide to stop using it, the FCC supporters argued, but switching ISPs because of potentially intrusive data mining "is far more difficult."
On the other side, supporters of this week's repeal said that strict ISP privacy regulations "stifle innovation" when providers are forced to abide by such overbearing guidelines and laws.
As some watchers of the repeal have noted, interest in virtual private networks has grown online in the wake of potential threats to user privacy. VPNs provide secure and encrypted connections between a user's Wi-Fi device and the VPN server, cloaking their browsing history and preventing intrusions into their private information. Major businesses and corporations most commonly use VPNs to ensure sensitive information remains private.
For the new legislation, the next step is for it to be signed by the President, at which point it will be officially enacted.
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Article Link: Privacy Concerns Loom as Congress Moves to Allow Internet Providers to Share Users' Sensitive Data
