Republicans in Congress have sold us out to the big telecommunications companies, and for what? Chump change, according to T. C. Sottek writing for The Verge.
For example, U.S. Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee), who has been ridiculed for her part in the rollback of FCC privacy rules by at least one late night comedian, got $84,000 from the telecom industry.
So it seems only fair that we buy the Internet search histories of everyone in Congress who voted for S. J. Res. 34. We might find that Blackburn likes to search for “Jason Siegel, no shirt” (oops, that’s Kate McKinnon as Angela Merkel).
Or we might find that Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin) likes to search for “naked woman wearing only a Packers cheese hat" (don’t add that to your Internet search history, take my word for it: that query does not bring up relevant results).
We might also find that a lot of gay bashers in Congress are themselves in the closet, and they’re almost invariably Republicans. Okay, that wouldn’t be a surprising revelation, given all the precedents.
There are several problems with the idea of buying anyone’s Internet search history, whether legal, technical or just plain logistical.
First of all, consider the nature of the Internet: a network built for redundancy. So as to not get too technical, let’s just say that it’s designed so that if there is an obstacle somewhere along the path, the communication will find another path to go through.
This gives the Internet the robustness that the Army generals, and Al Gore (just kidding), wanted. But it also creates some complications for figuring out what communication came from what computer at what time.
As for logistical problems, let’s assume that everyone in Congress uses the same Internet Service Provider (ISP) when they are in the building. But in their home district offices, they might use different ISPs.
In their private residences in Washington and in their home districts, they might use still other ISPs. And when you figure in ISPs for mobile devices, our assumption of congressional ISP homogeneity does not quite hold up.
And then there are the legal problems. Russell Brandom, writing for The Verge, points out that the Telecommunications Act is still in effect.
What [Adam McElhaney’s GoFundMe campaign to buy congressional search histories and other crowdfunding campaigns] describe would be illegal no matter what the FCC does. The Telecommunications Act explicitly prohibits the sharing of “individually identifiable” customer information except under very specific circumstances. It’s much more permissive when it comes to “aggregate” customer information, which is where things get squishier and the FCC rules become more important. We could argue all day about whether a targeted ad is individually identifiable or not, but if you’re paying Verizon to find out which sites Paul Ryan visited last month, that’s pretty clearly individual information, and pretty clearly illegal to sell.
Brandom also cites a Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) blog post that argues that the FCC rules are not needed to protect Internet privacy. However, the CEI does not inspire confidence: their home page praises Trump’s executive order against the environment (yay, short-term profits!).
McElhaney now acknowledges the difficulties.
Should something happen and I fail you, I want you to know that this money belongs to you and our cause. I have no intentions of keeping a nickel. I have no intentions of withdrawing any money until I am certain I can deliver.
GoFundMe let me know that offering to route certain people's donations to different organizations is complex. That said, if we can't buy the data in the end for whatever reason, we'll send funds to EFF so they can continue fighting for this mission. Refunds will still be possible too.
So we won’t get to see what Senator Roy Blunt (R-Missouri), who received $185,550 from telecom lobbyists, searches for on the Internet in Private Browsing mode. That dollar amount, by the way, is roughly $5,000 more than what McElhaney’s GoFundMe campaign had raised last time I checked.
On the plus side, your Internet search history is still somewhat private, with several caveats. For one, ISPs can still use your Internet search history to try to sell you stuff.
The algorithms are getting sophisticated. I have yet to figure out why an ad for Michael McCloskey’s Force Cantrithor showed up on a Daily Kos Recommended article I was reading last week. Somehow they figured out I like Star Trek and Star Wars.
So maybe you might still like to try to pad your Internet search history with random, unrelated, off-the-wall topics that give very few clues as to your actual interests.
With these search queries padding your history, the few people who can view your Internet search history will think that either you have the flightiest mind, or you are preparing to be a contestant on Jeopardy! That you might be someone who thinks about sex once in a while? Perish that thought!
- 80386 NOP opcode
- Largest aardvark population in North America
- Astrological charts of Adolf Hitler and Donald Trump
- Aspect ratios in the films of Robert Bresson
- Duchess of Cambridge prior to Kate Middleton
- ‘57 Chevy gas mileage
- Coldblooded (1995) movie review
- Coriolanus: compare and contrast Collins and Shakespeare
- Dalmatians in Peruvian literature
- Ekphrasis
- Em dash Alt code
- Epicor ERP keyboard shortcuts
- Famous right midfielders of Barclays Premier League
- Ford F-150 catalytic converter
- Recursion in modern Fortran
- Farshad Fotouhi silane gas incident
- Memory leaks due to global variables
- Fairway bunker rules
- Green Bay Packers at the Super Bowl
- ‘79 Honda Accord gas mileage
- The Flute Concertos of Vagn Holmboe
- Examples of hyperbaton in Norwegian poetry
- Who was the fifth Prime Minister of India?
- Japanese calligraphy
- Patterns of kingfisher migration
- Abraham Lincoln family tree
- How to convert litters to ounces
- Llamas
- Malbolge programming
- Sergeant Major of the Marine Corps in 1997
- Words Merriam-Webster added in 2008
- Difference between metonymy and exonymy
- Mike & Molly, Season 2
- Necktie made of silk and aluminum
- Oboe da caccia range
- Indiana pi value legislation
- What’s the difference between a palate, a palette and a pallet?
- Starfleet Lieutenant (j.g.) Palmer
- What does the Pause Break key do?
- Largest prime number not a Mersenne prime
- Prince Albert knot
- Vestiges of procedural programming in object oriented programming
- Alternatives to QWERTY
- Racquetball, old style rules
- “The Raven,” Alan Parsons Project
- Republicans elected U. S. President with more than 306 Electoral College votes
- Javan rhinoceros origami instructions
- Uppercase S with hacek
- Saturday Night Live cast members in 2003
- Scirocco tank capacity
- What’s the Scroll Lock key for anyway?
- Fictional search engines
- Typical sitcom duration not counting commercials in the 1980s
- Flags of the Soviet era
- Novels about the taxation of trade routes
- Balanced ternary arithmetic
- History of the United Arab Emirates
- Venetian fire escapes
- Wagner tuba bass clef notation quandaries
- Words that have stumped spelling bee champions
- Informal you pronouns in Slavic languages
- Zephyrs from the South
- Underrated zinfandels
Feel free to give suggestions in the comments. And, to the extent that you’re comfortable doing so, please let me know what commercials appear on this page right now.