More industry propaganda spread by New York Times

Read this one more thoughly


https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/30/technology/net-neutrality.html?_r=0

Verizon's AppFlash App Can Track Phones, Target Ads | Digital Trends

The article is too full of minutia and doesn't say much more than the headline. Suffice to say, every company is doing it, legal or not.

One of the commenter's statement below the article is that "nothing really changed" with this legislation.  This is straight out of industry talking points.  Although it is true that the recent FCC rules had yet to go into effect, the research, millions of public inputs and public interest briefs and the arduous rule making process has been ongoing for nearly 10 years, this throwing the baby out with the bathwater is the proverbial legislative "Green Light" that starts the race to the bottom for privacy and net neutrality that the industry has lobbied for many years.  Wall street will now see dollar signs and reward and invest in the most aggressive and abusive companies. Yes this does matter, even if the former rules would not have solved the problem of invasion of privacy.

Verizon's AppFlash App Can Track Phones, Target Ads | Digital Trends:



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How the Republicans Sold Your Privacy to Internet Providers

The only thing wrong with this article is that it blames the Republicans....They are to blame for everything you know, as if the Democrats had not gone down this road and sold us out over and over again to the ATTs, TeleComs, Comcasts, NBCs, and Googles of the world. And so it continues.



  .How the Republicans Sold Your Privacy to Internet Providers - The New York Times:

The bill 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.
The bill is an effort by the F.C.C.’s new Republican majority and congressional Republicans to overturn a simple but vitally important concept — namely that the information that goes over a network belongs to you as the consumer, not to the network hired to carry it. It’s an old idea: For decades, in both Republican and Democratic administrations, federal rules have protected the privacy of the information in a telephone call. In 2016, the F.C.C., which I led as chairman under President Barack Obama, extended those same protections to the Internet.

Well the very idea of it boils my blood.  "information that goes over a network belongs to you as the consumer, not to the network hired to carry it. It’s an old idea."  Indeed it is an old idea. It started with the founding of the country and the early postal service envisioned as a democratizing communications system -that would become the envy of the world. (And we were then not consumers then but citizens.) If you want to read up on it I very much recommend a book I have just finished, Prologue to a Farce: Communication and Democracy in America.  I warn you it is a sad sad book.

And then there is the much lauded democratizing potential of the Internet....Blah, blah, blah.  A very good idea, but just hasn't worked out that way in real life politics largely controlled by corporate plutocracy. Very recently there was  good piece in the Nation, basically an momentarily premature obituary on "Net Neutrality" .  Trumps new FCC chair who is an obvious hatchet man for the industry plans to kill his own agency.  Not a new idea.  The gist of the NYT piece is that congress took power away from the FCC so they can not regulate in our interest.  True enough but this is a big overstatement on the true nature of that agency since it's inception.

One article that predicted what was going to happen  Tom Wheeler: Trump, GOP Plan To 'Modernize' The FCC A 'Fraud'  in "Tech Dirt" goes very deep  on the political scuttlebutt side but it is full of great references  Like who are these companies and what do they mean by competition and modernization?

The end result of this "modernization"? Less oversight than ever for industry giants AT&T, Comcast, Verizon and Charter. Given these companies' growing size, long and undeniable track record of anti-competitive behavior and outright fraud, what could possibly go wrong?

.....and we wouldn't want to go to Net Neutrality's funeral and memorial with out a few word to say and maybe some facts. Read it.


'via Blog this'

Trump’s Net Neutrality-Hating FCC Chair Is Already Gutting Public-Interest Regulations

I share the concern with many of my techie friend the Net Neutrality is very important and we are losing it by pieces and now by lumps.  You should read up.



Trump’s Net Neutrality-Hating FCC Chair Is Already Gutting Public-Interest Regulations | The Nation:

Within days of assuming the presidency, Trump named Ajit Pai as his FCC chair. A former associate general counsel for the Verizon telecommunications conglomerate, Pai was one of the FCC’s five commissioners during the Obama era. In that role, he often dissented against consumer-friendly regulations, robust market competition, and diversification of media ownership. Now, as FCC chair, Pai has moved rapidly to undo Obama’s FCC legacy, reversing or weakening measures that had begun to restore the commission’s commitment to regulating on behalf of the public, rather than the corporate, interest.

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Money Talks, especially a whole lot of money from AT&T & Comcast

This is a very sad story about mainstream civil rights groups taking huge amounts of money from corporations in order to support these corporations lobbying efforts. In this case get this the NAACP is promoting the end of net neutrality, go figure

http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/41955-civil-rights-groups-funded-by-telecoms-back-donald-trumps-plan-to-kill-net-neutrality

The Internet's Own Boy

The NYPD Is Already a Small Army

Now It Is Hyping Terror Threats to Militarize Even More

"You name it, we are buying it," says NYPD Chief Bill Bratton as city purchases $7.5 million in military-style gear."




And you thought after Giuliani and Bloomberg, Bill de Blasio was a populist or progressive?

Putin Is a Dream Villain for the US

FOCUS: The Russian 'Thug' Is a Dream Villain for the US:

"The American military and industrial complex needs a new enemy to justify its massive budget and Vladimir Putin is the right person at the right time, argues Peter Van Buren."

Privately I have been predicting that Hillary will have us in a shooting or bombing war within 90 days.  This would have the benefit for the administration that they would no longer need to listen to the Bernie supporters or make good on any of the promises that were made to secure the nomination.  The progressive DNC platform would be subverted by more "important" things -- war and patriotism.  We have been here before.  Thinking that a president would do such a thing is very cynical you may say but we have been headed strongly in the direction of a surveillance/security state for many years and war may be the only way to maintain that direction which is clearly Hillary's mission.  Adding to that that Hillary's hatred and aggressive rhetoric toward Putin is without peer strenghens Van Buren's argument.