Internet Privacy in U.S. Could Be Overturned

The bill will now move onto the House of Representatives.

By Jonathon Dornbush

The United States Senate approved a resolution on Thursday to repeal privacy rules passed in October 2016 that required internet service providers to have users' permission to share the data they have collected.

The resolution passed by a 50-48 vote, which was entirely along party lines with two Republican senators not voting.

The rules were passed by the Federal Communications Commission in October 2016 when then-FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said "It's the consumers' information. How it is used should be the consumers' choice." The rules passed by a 3-2 FCC vote have not actually yet gone into effect, but they would have demanded that ISPs inform consumers both just exactly what information is being amassed and the ISPs' intents to share it in some fashion. In certain circumstances, user consent would be required for that information to be shared.

At the time of the original vote passing the privacy rules, The New York Times noted this would greatly affect companies like AT&T and Comcast, as they use collected user data for targeted advertising. Privacy groups at the time celebrated the passing of the rules, while cable lobbying groups decried the measure as "regulatory opportunism."

In the wake of the rules passing in October, as the Times reports, broadband providers like Comcast created the lobbying group 21st Century Privacy Coalition to defeat those rules.

As NPR's report of the vote notes, Republicans in favor of repealing the privacy rules have argued that this creates an imbalance between ISPs and other massive companies like Google or Facebook that collect data, as they're overseen by the Federal Trade Commission. So even with those rules having been passed, such major companies did not have to worry about freely sharing user data.

The FCC's new chairman, Ajit Pai, is in line with Republican lawmakers who opposed the rules, and said he would examine other avenues of protecting users if the bill is enacted into law, according to NPR.

"My own core goal is to make sure that that uniform expectation of privacy ... is vindicated through the use of regulatory framework that establishes a level playing field," Pai said on Thursday when asked about the vote.

Meanwhile FCC commissioner Mignon Clyburn and FTC commissioner Terrell McSweeny released a joint statement calling this decision "the antithesis of putting #ConsumersFirst."

"The House must still consider this legislation. We hope they recognize the importance of consumer privacy and not undermine the ability of Americans to exercise control over their sensitive data," the official statement reads.

With the bill's passage in the Senate, it will next move to the House of Representatives. It is currently not certain, however, when the House, which also has a Republican majority, will vote on the bill as well. If passed by the House, it will then move to President Donald Trump for his signature.

Stay tuned to IGN for more on the bill.

Jonathon Dornbush is an Associate Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter @jmdornbush.

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