This might be considered being just a tad out of touch with your constituents. Particularly the ones living in 2017. When challenged at a town meeting on the Republican legislation recently signed by popular vote loser Donald Trump, that rolled back internet privacy Rep. James Sensenbrenner (R-WI) had a really bad answer.
“Nobody’s got to use the Internet at all,” Sensenbrenner told the attendee. “And the thing is that if you start regulating the Internet like a utility, if we did that right at the beginning, we would have no Internet.”
“Internet companies have invested an awful lot of money in having almost universal service now. The fact is is that, you know, I don’t think it’s my job to tell you that you cannot get advertising for your information being sold. My job, I think, is to tell you that you have the opportunity to do it, and then you take it upon yourself to make that choice,” the congressman continued. “That’s what the law has been, and I think we ought to have more choices rather than fewer choices with the government controlling our everyday lives.”
You should be thanking your internet service provider and all those companies who will be sucking up all your private details. They invested all this money to get you as a customer and now that they spent it, they should be able to get it back by selling your data. Whether you approve or not.
That’s some word salad up there, but it's possible that Sensenbrenner's ignorance goes beyond not understanding the 21st century. It could also be that he doesn't understand exactly what it is that he voted on, because it seems like he's saying just don't go to the pages that have privacy policies you don't agree with. This isn't just about Facebook or Amazon or whoever. It's about internet service providers. And there we have little choice—most Americans live where there's only one or two possible providers. We don't have a choice if our providers decide to monitor our online behavior and use that—without our permission—to sell targeted ads. Or to directly sell all that information to marketers or financial firms or any other company that would use the data—without our consent.
So we're back to square one. Don't use the internet at all. It's not like having all of America that's concerned about their privacy could destroy the economy by shutting down their internet.