The House yesterday approved a bill that, according to the New York Times, “not only gives cable companies and wireless providers free rein to do what they like with your browsing history, shopping habits, your location and other information gleaned from your online activity, but it would also prevent the Federal Communications Commission from ever again establishing similar consumer privacy protections.”
Naturally, the hysterics are out in force - and just as naturally, they're wrong; the ISP you use can sell aggregate data, but not personally identifiable data. Nonetheless, there's a nutball out there who's trying to collect $1 million in donations that he intends to use to buy:
The Internet histories of all legislators, congressmen, executives, and their families and make them easily searchable at searchinternethistory.com.
Everything from their medical, pornographic, to their financial and infidelity.
Anything they have looked at, searched for, or visited on the Internet will now be available for everyone to comb through.
There's just one little problem: you can't do it. There's a rather large difference between aggregate data (think Google) and personal, individual online activity. Selling the former is legal; selling the latter is not.
The Telecommunications Act explicitly prohibits the sharing of “individually identifiable” customer information except under very specific circumstances.
As in: should law enforcement suspect that you're into kiddie porn or terrorism. Even in such cases and armed with a warrant, they simply scoop up all of your electronics and forensically examine them; they don't go to the ISP and demand browsing records. Just last week we discussed here the case of a guy who's been in jail for 18 months because although authorities have evidence of his involvement in kiddie porn, he downloaded files to two portable hard drives, which are encrypted, and he refuses to give up the passcode to unlock them. He's being held indefintely, and his lawyer's efforts to win his release have thus far proven fruitless.
Under the heading of "very specific circumstances" come things such as the recent string of threats to Jewish Community Centers. They were found to have originated in Israel, and to have been made by an Israeli-American. In these kinds of cases, individually identifiable information is gathered.
But paranoia is powerful, and there's a lot of it floating around because "Trump administration!" "Republicans!" Auugh! It's unclear as to whether Trump Derangement Syndrome is covered under Obamacare. Also unclear is what the aforementioned nutter is going to do with the donations he's managed to scam from other nutters.
One thing is clear: he's not going to buy the "Internet histories" of anybody. But as long as he's only scamming like-minded nutters, it's all good.
Hysteria: it's what's for dinner.
