With the stroke of his pen, Donald Trump signed into law a bill that officially ends federal online privacy rules – blocking the implementation of rules that would have required ISPs (Internet Service Providers) to ask permission before selling your private web browsing history to advertisers and third parties. In other words, ISPs like Comcast, Verizon, Time Warner Cable, and AT&T can collect information on your Internet habits without you knowing about it, and sell them to the highest bidder.
This law blocks rules that were originally passed by the FCC in October of last year and set to go into effect later this year. These rules would have prevented ISPs from selling customers’ web history and would have made it much harder for ISPs to track and deliver targeted advertisements. With the passage of the bill, these rules are effectively dead.
The bill that Trump signed into law not only blocks the rules, but prevents the FCC from creating similar rules in the future. In other words, the FCC has been effectively neutered when dealing with ISPs who trade their customers’ privacy for increased profit.
The passage of this bill was completely along party lines. It is worth noting that not one Democrat in both the house and the Senate voted for this bill. These Republican lawmakers who sold out the privacy of American citizens, received huge amounts of money from the Telecom Industry in this past election cycle. A full list of the lawmakers and how much money they received can be found at http://theverge.com
More information can be found on this topic at the Electronic Frontier Foundation website. http://eff.org
