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The Senate, Congress, and US leaders, in general, are supposed to protect American citizens from having their rights abused. However, an upcoming vote is expected to see Senators move for the removal of legislations that are meant to protect consumers against data collection by major internet service providers. There are those who intend to cast a vote of opposition, but they are too few to make a difference.
Last year, the Federal Communication Commission passed what’s called the Broadband Consumer Privacy Rules, which is meant to make sure that ISPs will not be able to gather customer information to then sell to other companies without permission. A spokesperson for Florida Democratic Senator Bill Nelson who will be voting against the repeal confirmed to the International Business Times that a vote was going to take place on Thursday, which will decide the fate of the legislation.
The privacy protection initiative by the previous FCC leaders will be subjected to the Congressional Review Act (CRA), which will basically look at the merits of the legislation. If the Senate votes to repeal privacy protection, not only will consumers lose the right to control which of their information ISPs can access, it will stop the FCC from ever imposing the same rules in the future.
As WIRED notes, this important development is already being quietly implemented as it is, but the various shenanigans by the Trump administration are overshadowing it even more. While most citizens are focused on the SCOTUS appointment of Neil Gorsuch, the Senate is sneakily gutting their right to privacy.
As to how Senate members can even justify what they are about to do, their go-to response is that the current rules are supposedly confusing to consumers. They contend that current rules only apply to ISPs, but companies like Google and Facebook are doing the exact same thing. This may well be the case, but it doesn’t make sense to remove the protection without something good to replace it with either.
By removing the current privacy rules, the Senate will also be granting carriers like AT&T and Verizon the chance to enter the digital advertising market, which is expected to reach $83 billion in 2017. This is exactly what ISPs have been gunning for from the start.
