Senate Republicans vote to repeal internet privacy rules

[PZ]

The anonymous way to browse the internet is to use something like the Tor browser which makes use of the Tor network, a distributed network of relays run by volunteers all around the world. In fact, you need not even install the browser, it will even run off a flash drive (or local folder if you prefer.  Alternatively, you could add HTTPSEverywhere to your Firefox install. Onion browser is simply Tor browser for iOs. Either way, you get a performance hit due to using the Tor network. It does not need any setup of configuration from the end user.

Tor is short for The Onion Router and was initially a worldwide network of servers developed with the U.S. Navy that enabled people to browse the internet anonymously. Now, it's a non-profit organization whose main purpose is the research and development of online privacy tools. The Tor network disguises your identity by moving your traffic across different Tor servers, and encrypting that traffic so it isn't traced back to you. Anyone who tries would see traffic coming from random nodes on the Tor network, rather than your computer. Tor is handy, but it's far from perfect. Don't think just because you're using Tor that you're perfectly anonymous. Someone like the NSA can tell if you're a Tor user and that makes them more likely to target you. With a enough w0#k, the government can figure out who you are. Tor browsing will keep you anonymous, but not secure; your browser can be hacked in to. 

Here's something interesting: Firesheep is a proof-of-concept Firefox extension created by Eric Butler to show how leaky the security many popular web sites (like Facebook, Flickr, Amazon.com, Dropbox, Evernote, and more) employ is. The problem, as Firesheep shockingly demonstrates, is that many web sites only encrypt your login. Once you are logged in they use an unsecured connection with a simple cookie check. Anyone from your IP address (that of the Wi-Fi hotspot) with that cookie can be you. When using Firesheep on a public hot spot any session it can intercept is displayed in the Firesheep pane with the user's name and photograph (when available). Simply click on their name to intercept the session and start browsing the website as though you are them.

If it ends up Tor's not your thing, you have a few other options. Reader Briareos suggests using an off-shore VPN service that doesn't log your access. Off-shore VPS services are not required to adhere to US data retention laws, so many if not all do not keep logs of your activity.

Most importantly, remember: nothing is 100% anonymous or secure, whether you're using Tor, a VPN, or anything else. If you think you need something along these lines, think about what exactly you're doing and what you need to protect—half the battle is picking the right tool for the job.

If you wanted to try out a free VPN service (OpenVPN), here is a link to Private Tunnel I checked the link using AB's URL checking tool, and it is clean    The limitation is that the free version limits your data to 200 mb, you heed their browser, and it is based in the US, which means that they are required to maintain user logs.  However, it will give you an idea how VPNs w0#k.

[Dweller_Benthos]

The thing is, they've been doing it all along (selling your info). The FCC under the last administration just put down rules about letting you know they are selling your info, and to supply adequate and working tools to allow you to opt out of the selling if you so wish. So, essentially, they've just eliminated the very few small speedbumps that the last FCC put up that were apparently just too inconvenient for telcos to deal with. There was even talk of making that sort of thing (selling info) an opt-in, not an opt-out, but that was squashed big time.

The large telcos buy the people in congress, there is no pretense that they even try to make it look legit or away from the public eye. The telco lawyers write the laws the telco wants passed in order to increase it's profit margins, hand them to the congress critter with a bundle of cash, and say "Get this law passed" and it is.

[PZ]

True - they have been selling the information since the beginning of Internet time.  It sure would be nice to stop them from doing so, which is what this bill would have tried to accomplish. 

I'm sure I would have less targeted email and phone spam if I could truly be anonymous with encrypted data that my ISP (or others) would find too much trouble to try to decrypt.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Here is a article about it, I've been following this stuff on this website for a long time, they always have the news of this sort of thing up pretty fast.

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/ISP-Attempt-to-Kill-Broadband-Privacy-Rules-Moves-to-House-139231

[PZ]

Well, it's official - the repeal passed the Senate last week, and just passed the House to allow Internet providers to continue selling your data without your approval.  All it needs now is the President's signature. Because it involves corporate profits, I would be floored if he did not approve the repeal.

http://www.businessinsider.com/house-republicans-kill-fcc-broadband-privacy-rules-2017-3

Too bad really, this was a bill that would have helped protect the end user.  However, we can't let privacy interfere with potential profits. 

[Art Blade]

oh man. profit over privacy 

[PZ]

Absolutely - profits are the God to whom we pray.

[Art Blade]

I don't. Nothing against a profit but there are quite many things above it.

[fragger]

However, we can't let privacy interfere with potential profits. 

Nor the environment. Profits must take precedence over everything, it seems. According to Trump (in response to the question "Who's going to protect the environment?" while being grilled about his EPA budget cuts):

"We'll be fine with the environment. We can leave a little bit, but you can't destroy businesses".

"A little bit"? What the dickens does that mean? A small grove of trees somewhere in Montana? And as for not destroying businesses, his proposed EPA cuts can mean the potential destruction of rural businesses that will be directly affected by his budgetary slashing. EPA regulations that prevent, say, the dumping of coal or industrial waste into waterways are not about climate change - they're about protecting the health of America's rural lands and the health and livelihoods of the people who live there. Repealing EPA regulations such as those may not have any effect one way or the other on "global warming", but it does have the potential to negatively influence the production of crop goods in the areas affected - i.e. could kill it stone dead, along with the livelihoods of those who w0#k those lands.

I agree that agencies such as the EPA can go overboard with regulations, but a good deal of what they do is valid. We're supposedly more enlightened today about the adverse effects our actions can have on the world than we were even just a few decades ago. Trump, the dinosaur-like throwback, wants to undo all that in pursuit of his cherished dollar. Fat lot of good all that wealth will do if the country becomes barren. If he manages to kill off enough of America's produce industry, America will have no choice but to import it instead - and people will end up paying through the nose for it.

I'd really like to know what Trump's definition of "great" is. I guess it could be summed up by these stirring words to the personnel on board USS Gerald R. Ford:

"Our navy is great. Our navy is great. Our people are great... Great".

Such enthralling oratory

[PZ]

I really dislike the two party system in which we have hard right and hard left - essentially black and white thinking when in fact, life is shades of gray. I wonder why there is not a party called "moderate" which embodies all the best parts of the extreme democrat and republican parties, and leaves the unconscionable thinking behind.

[fragger]

It's largely the same here. There are two main parties, Liberal and Labor. Those titles did mean something once upon a time, but they ceased to have any kind of ideological worth a long time ago. Nowadays they're just two bunches of squabbling politicians, equally inept - except in the mudslinging department. They all excel at that. Every election we have is a Hobson's choice, only we don't get to decide whether we want to vote or not - it's mandatory.

I'm willing to bet that if an opposition leader came along who didn't sling the muck whenever he or she opened his or her gob, and if they explained in detail what they would do instead of running down whatever the governing party tries to do, they'd win by a popular landslide. People are sick to death of all the name-calling and yelling that goes on in "Parliament", the members behaving like a classroom full of unruly brats when the teacher has left the room. It's stomach turning, and the way they all smile and laugh while this vitriol-chucking contest is going on is infuriating. I'd like to to slap upside every one of those stupidly grinning heads, remind them why they're there and make them approach the process with due gravitas. Instead, it's all just a big game to them, to see who can outshout the other and come up with the most clever putdown, and they all apparently regard it as a great source of entertainment.

I play my own game whenever I happen to see this lot on TV. I call it, "Spot the Dozing Backbencher". You score ten points for every head you see nodding off, and five bonus points if you see one fall forwards and get startled awake. I scored seventy-five once. There's always at least a couple, drooling on their shirtfronts and blissfully unaware of what's going on around them. Not that they miss anything, so they might as well doze, I guess, though how they can sleep through all that noise is beyond me. They're about as productive asleep as they are awake anyway.

[Dweller_Benthos]

Sounds like my local state government and the annual fight over the budget, which is due tomorrow, and in my memory has never been on time. On the news last night, they were interviewing a few of our representatives and they were complaining they had nothing to do - all the negotiations were taking place between a few people behind closed doors somewhere, nothing was going on in the main discussion area. They even showed representatives during session playing on their phones and one lady doing needlepoint or something. So, all these people we elect to represent us have no say in what's going on as it's a handful of them that have the actual power and decide stuff away from the public eye.

[PZ]

I play my own game whenever I happen to see this lot on TV. I call it, "Spot the Dozing Backbencher". You score ten points for every head you see nodding off, and five bonus points if you see one fall forwards and get startled awake. I scored seventy-five once. There's always at least a couple, drooling on their shirtfronts and blissfully unaware of what's going on around them. Not that they miss anything, so they might as well doze, I guess, though how they can sleep through all that noise is beyond me. They're about as productive asleep as they are awake anyway.

Amazing how corruption is the same everywhere. Evidently the more money a person has, the more corrupt they tend to be - it is as if the more money a person makes, the greedier they become to the point where they do not care how they ruin the world as ling as they get that "one dollar more" as Rockefeller was so famous for saying.