'Cards Against Humanity' Creator to Buy and Publish Congress's Browser History

They wouldn't get actual Google or Bing searches as neither company would sell those on - I imagine at most they'd get top-lists of DNS resolutions in a given geographical area, possibly with some demographic data thrown in - still valuable data for some marketers though, but unlikely to be anything juicy.

I wonder if any ISPs would sell that data for any price, given the risk of backlash.

And why bother when they can follow Google & Facebook's insanely profitable profiling / targeting ad playbook?

Considering that almost 60% of us use Chrome which is owned / designed by the world's biggest advertising company (1) and that leaks privacy even in "incognito" mode (2) I feel like the narrative around the FCC order is not intellectually honest.

EG - Google - in fact - came out AGAINST the original framework that was repealed this week! (3)

The new FCC Chairman - Ajit Pai - has stated he endorsed this act to re-level the playing field for ISPs vs Facebook / Google / and the less visible ad tracking / ad profiling agencies.

And he's further stated that he's going to use this opportunity, of resetting the playing field, to create a framework that applies for EVERYTHING digital.

I am not going to pretend that I am optimistic that the FCC is going to build a consumer framework that we can all live with, but I am confused how Google / FB / etc are getting away with murder on the privacy / profiling side.

Let's use this opportunity to push for the "opt in" framework that makes the most sense.

(1) https://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qpr...

(2) https://www.quora.com/Does-Google-track-what-happens-in-the-...

(3) https://ecfsapi.fcc.gov/file/100319291940/2016-10-03%20Googl...

Under federal law, all communications to which a federal employee is a party constitute public records. Obviously, that doesn't mean they are all publically available; white house emails, for example, have traditionally been released several decades following the end of the administration. (With redactions, of course.)

Today, congressional staffers and politicians at every level use private email accounts and cell phones to subvert public disclosure, and by extension, public accountability. Even when the political or security sensitivity of such records is long gone, historians will likely never be able to track them down or study them.

EDIT: Congress is specifically granted an exemption to most of the public records laws that apply to the executive branch, including FOIA.

I'm not really sure how I feel about this one, though. The reason we're in this mess in the first place is that too few Americans really understand what's at stake re: online privacy.

--Update-- He brings that up (kinda) here https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/62a3kj/cards_agai...

As far as I know, nobody is looking to make browser history available for purchase. It's unlikely that anybody aside from the NSA or some other state-actor, with very significant resources available to them, is even capable of storing that data.

Ask yourself this question: can you currently buy all of, for instance, Jeff Session's private facebook data? Every message he's ever sent, like he's made, etc.?

Of course not.

What you can do, and what ISPs are very possibly looking to do, is make general demographic information available to advertisers.

For instance: if a person has shown a recent interest in camping, show them ads for camping equipment.

Now, I absolutely do not think that this is acceptable (ISPs sharing data, however I do think that facebook giving me targeted advertisements is a perfectly reasonable exchange).

I just think that it's important to know what is being talked about. Especially when it comes to people trying to scam others for money.

Then you buy 2 more circles, find out where they all intersect - bam, got yourself data for a given point.

Same as the old Tinder tracking exploit.

So the status quo is being maintained, Telecommunications Act already makes it illegal to sell personally identifiable information, and there is no browser history apocalypse coming.

Republicans (this was a party line vote) say it is unfair that Google and Facebook have your personal information and use it for ads but why can't ISPs have that and also sell it? One big fucking reason is people sign up to Google and Facebook for the purpose of sharing and agree to their ads in exchange for a service. Google built the most powerful search engine and Facebook built the social graph. Google/Facebook built value and they only use your info to target ads to you, they don't sell it because others would do the same. They sell ads and people use them because they have info on you, not necessarily to sell off to others.

If you ask me it is unfair for republicans to legally allow ISPs to do the same because we expect privacy from ISPs in ways we do not from Google and Facebook. You can choose not to use Google or Facebook but you cannot choose your ISP/broadband provider. In my opinion this is like letting someone view your mail, read it and then sell information about you. It is also an unfair competitive advantage for ISPs because they can place ads on any website if they want or track you across all sites not just like Google/Facebook which are huge but only see a portion of what you do. ISPs built no value product like a search engine or social graph for this purpose, they should do that if they want access like Google and Facebook. It seems almost like the GOP are harming innovative companies and rewarding/catching up non-innovators. I bet broadband companies/ISPs won't even use the profits to improve broadband and rollout gigabit service for real. It is a rewarding of lazy semi-monopolies over innovative companies and products.

Republicans also control the FTC not the FCC so they want all control to fall to the FTC instead. It is both a power grab and a bending over of all their constituents.

Most of all, it is also another step in dismantling net neutrality as FCC protected that by categorizing the broadband/ISPs as a common carriers and they want to sap the FCCs power in that regard.