<story><title>You can’t buy Congress’s web history – that&apos;s not how any of this works</title><url>http://www.theverge.com/2017/3/29/15115382/buy-congress-web-history-gop-fake-internet-privacy</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>AdamSC1</author><text>This article fails to take into account that time and time again we&amp;#x27;ve seen that &amp;#x27;anonyimized aggregate data&amp;#x27; is never truly anonymous.&lt;p&gt;In the AOL anonimized data leak there were plenty of individuals identified:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nytimes.com&amp;#x2F;2006&amp;#x2F;08&amp;#x2F;09&amp;#x2F;technology&amp;#x2F;09aol.html&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.nytimes.com&amp;#x2F;2006&amp;#x2F;08&amp;#x2F;09&amp;#x2F;technology&amp;#x2F;09aol.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;MIT researchers also showed that four anonymous purchases are enough metadata to identify 90% of individuals:&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.technologyreview.com&amp;#x2F;s&amp;#x2F;536501&amp;#x2F;data-sets-not-so-anonymous&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.technologyreview.com&amp;#x2F;s&amp;#x2F;536501&amp;#x2F;data-sets-not-so-a...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;And, a personal favorite of mine where researchers from Standford and Princeton are reporting at the World Wide Web Conference this April: &amp;quot;Researchers found that they could identify the person behind an &amp;#x27;anonymized&amp;#x27; data set 70% of the time just by comparing their browsing data to [often public] social media activities&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.techdirt.com&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;20170123&amp;#x2F;08125136548&amp;#x2F;one-more-time-with-feeling-anonymized-user-data-not-really-anonymous.shtml&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.techdirt.com&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;20170123&amp;#x2F;08125136548&amp;#x2F;one-m...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;It would not be hard to buy a zipcode worth of data and compare it to known facts about a person until you de-anonymized it.</text></comment>
<story><title>You can’t buy Congress’s web history – that&apos;s not how any of this works</title><url>http://www.theverge.com/2017/3/29/15115382/buy-congress-web-history-gop-fake-internet-privacy</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>drawkbox</author><text>People are missing the point on the bill, it isn&amp;#x27;t just horrible for privacy. Really this is a jab at net neutrality, the open selling of data by ISPs is a power grab away from the FCC that helped to make net neutrality a thing by labeling broadband&amp;#x2F;ISPs as common carriers.&lt;p&gt;Republicans (this was a party line vote) say it is unfair that Google and Facebook have your personal information and use it for ads but why can&amp;#x27;t ISPs have that and also sell it? One big major reason is people sign up to Google and Facebook for the purpose of sharing and agree to their ads in exchange for a service. Google built the most powerful search engine and Facebook built the social graph. Google&amp;#x2F;Facebook built value and they only use your info to target ads to you, they don&amp;#x27;t sell it because others would do the same. They sell ads and people use them because they have info on you, not necessarily to sell off to others.&lt;p&gt;If you ask me it is unfair for republicans to legally allow ISPs to do the same because we expect privacy from ISPs in ways we do not from Google and Facebook. You can choose not to use Google or Facebook but you cannot choose your ISP&amp;#x2F;broadband provider. In my opinion this is like letting someone view your mail, read it and then sell information about you.&lt;p&gt;It is also an unfair competitive advantage for ISPs above all because they can place ads on any website if they want or track you across all sites not just like Google&amp;#x2F;Facebook which are huge but only see a portion of what you do. ISPs built no value product like a search engine or social graph for this purpose, they should do that if they want access like Google and Facebook. It seems almost like the GOP are harming innovative companies and rewarding&amp;#x2F;catching up non-innovators. I bet broadband companies&amp;#x2F;ISPs won&amp;#x27;t even use the profits to improve broadband and rollout gigabit service for real. It is a rewarding of lazy semi-monopolies over innovative companies and products.&lt;p&gt;Republicans also control the FTC not the FCC so they want all control to fall to the FTC instead. It is both a power grab and a bending over of all their constituents.&lt;p&gt;Most of all, it is also another step in dismantling net neutrality as FCC protected that by categorizing the broadband&amp;#x2F;ISPs as a common carriers and they want to sap the FCCs power in that regard.</text></comment>