Congress Receives Threat From Unlikely Source Over Privacy Protection Repeal

With Congress recently scrapping the Privacy Protection Act that kept customer data safe from ISP mining, it seems US representatives have made a lot of enemies. A good example is the creator of the wildly popular card game “Cards Against Humanity” who just threatened to buy the data of House members and then release it to the public.

Max Temkin is the insane mind behind the deliciously weird party game and he recently sent out a Tweet basically threatening Paul Ryan and the rest of the people in congress to expose their browser history. In the corresponding thread, Temkin also assures followers that it is possible to identify at least some of the representatives and aides in order to tie specific details with names.

“If this sh** passes I will buy the browser history of every congressman and congressional aide and publish it. cc @SpeakerRyan,” the Tweet reads.

The Tweet has since gone viral, even creating a huge thread over at Reddit. It has gotten so popular, in fact, that Temkin spoke out in order to at least dampen the fire he started. He emphasized the importance of more than simply upvoting or expressing support for the cause, and stressed how this is not a laughing matter.

Temkin isn’t the only person of note to express opposition to the move, Fortune reports, as former Federal Communication Commission head Tom Wheeler is also incensed by the repeal. The privacy act was implemented during Wheeler’s term under the Obama administration.

Writing to The New York Times, the former FCC chairman expressed his dismay at what he considers a violation of a fundamental right of consumers. He stressed that user data belongs to the users and no one else.

"The bill is an effort by the F.C.C.’s new Republican majority and congressional Republicans to overturn a simple but vitally important concept—namely that the information that goes over a network belongs to you as the consumer, not to the network hired to carry it," Wheel wrote. "Reversing those protections is a dream for cable and telephone companies, which want to capitalize on the value of such personal information."