- By Dan Veaner
- Opinions
Print 
"Lawmakers who voted in favor of this bill just sold out the American people to special interests," said Congressman Jared Polis (D-Colo). Polis was referring to the 215-205 vote in Congress Tuesday that passed House Joint Resolution 86. If passed by the Senate and signed by President Trump this bill will allow ISPs (Internet Service Providers) to sell your personal information. ISPs like Verizon, Spectrum, AT&T and many others get this information because you access the Internet through their service. So they can see just about everything you do. This is valuable, for one thing, because they can use the information to push ads targeted to your preferences, and targeted ads are a lot more valuable than ads that just go out to everyone, regardless of their interest.
Have you ever had ads from companies you bought from online appear to follow you to sites like Facebook or other sites you may not have planned to visit, but when you did there was an ad from the company you bought that something from only a day or two ago? That's how they do that. Somebody has gathered the information that you bought something from Company A. That company buys a service from Google or some other aggregator of personal information that sends you Company A's ad on a variety of Web sites when it recognizes that it is you visiting their page. So when Congressman Polis said his colleagues sold out the American people to special interests, he meant it literally. This bill allows your Internet providers to sell you to other companies -- or at least your private information.
This is the sort of thing that also allows ISPs to slow down services like Netflix or Hulu -- or your own Web site for that matter -- unless they pay to be delivered speedily. It is clear to see how rules like this benefit special interests like ISPs or giant search companies or advertisers. But it is very hard to see how they benefit you or me.
If you have ever wondered how Google provides so many really great free services, that is more or less how they do it. Your browsing history is tracked by various products (my own paranoia about this makes me use the Google Chrome browser almost not at all even though it is an excellent browser). Google's Analytics tool, used by many, many Web sites knows who accessed your site. Every entry point to the Internet has an IP (Internet Protocol) number, the actual address of the device that has connected to the Internet. This Web site has one, and so does your cable modem, DSL modem, cell phone, or even your thermostat or refrigerator if they are Internet-enabled.
When you go to a Web site you send it your IP number with a request for the page you want. The site, in turn, collects the things you requested (for example, the Web page and all the pictures and videos on it) and sends it back to your IP address. The only way it knows to send you this information is because you told it where to send it.
I have heard the argument that this targeted advertisement is a benefit to me, because I am only shown ads that are of interest to me, and not bothered by ads I have no interest in at all. Balderdash. If something is of interest to me I can search for it on Google (or DuckDuckGo if I don't want my searches recorded and tracked).
Just yesterday I blocked an IP address in Israel that had accessed our site a half million times in a three day period (this could have been a mistake, but was more likely an attempt to attack our Web site). How did I know who to block? Our Web server keeps logs that report on every single IP that accesses our site. It shows the IP number of whoever wanted to view the site, plus what they requested. I was able to single out this one because a half million hits from one IP in three days is very unusual for a site our size. I was also able to find out who this person's ISP is and send their Abuse Department an email.
So if I happened to know your IP address I would know every time you accessed our Web site and I would know exactly what you looked at. The difference between me and your ISP is that I only know you by your IP number. They know your name, your address, very likely your credit card number and many other things about you. This bill gives them free reign to sell this data to other companies.
You can see where this is going -- mainly it's going to be about money, selling your information for the purposes of increasing commerce. If you've been thinking ahead, you have probably figured out that when you visit those naughty sights it might result in a slew of naughty ads showing up whenever you use your browser. Or whenever your spouse does. I won't go any further into the darker side of the possibilities this opens up. Use your imagination. Anything you are imagining right now is absolutely true.
And that is why you should be very, very afraid, and very disappointed in your elected representatives if they voted for this resolution.
I happen to like our Congressman (Tom Reed, R-New York) on a personal level. I have the privilege of knowing him a little bit because of local events he has participated in or conducted that I covered for the newspaper. He is a very personable guy with mad political skills. He is unapologetic about his beliefs, something I admire about him. Unlike many politicians who shape their message to each audience, he simply says what he believes, and acknowledges that you may or may not agree with him. He says he wants to find the things you and he can agree on and work together to make those happen. Underlying that is the notion that if he is honest about who he is and what he stands for, if the majority of voters in his district agree with him they will vote for him. Politically I do not agree with probably 40% or so of what he wants to do, but I have high regard for the up-front way he goes about doing it. You get what you vote for.
It is distressing that he would support special interests in a way that makes the Internet less free and more invasive to all his constituents, not to mention the Congressman himself. An insidious way - not his style - because most of us have no idea the extent to which our private information is used by ISPs, Google, and other companies. Or how very much they collect. And even if they are forced to disclose something about what they are doing in the small print, haven't you ever asked yourself why that print is so small and why there is so much of it? It's so nobody will read it and therefore know what they are signing up for.
Here is a clarification: Google can already do this because you let them. When you use the services they give to you, you agree that they can collect and use whatever information they can gather. It appears you get Google stuff for free, but this is actually how you pay them. I personally don't like it, but it's fair.
ISPs don't like that the Obama administration thought that they shouldn't be able to do the same thing, even though you are paying for their services already.
To me this ranks with spammers, distributors of malware. In an open system email was arguably one of the greatest inventions of our era, but spammers and hackers have made it so dangerous and annoying that they have pretty much ruined it. Same for computers and the people who attack them. Same for Websites and the people who attack or hack them. And now the same for the big companies that Congress wants to ruin Internet access for.
In 2015 the Huffington Post reported that Time Warner Cable has a 97% profit margin on its high-speed Internet service. That's pretty good profit. Do they really need so many more millions of dollars? For that kind of money don't you think ISPs could keep your data private for you?
Congress has voted for a pretty good racket. You are paying an exorbitant amount of money to access the Internet. In return the company you are paying gets to sell anything they learn about you for their own profit. You are paying them to sell you out. The majority of our representatives in Congress told us in their vote Tuesday that they think this is a good idea.
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