The FCC, also known as the Federal Communications Commission, is tasked with regulating media content that is released to the American public including film, radio, and TV. Congress, however, has shifted its attention to another side of the FCC's responsibilities, which serves to protect the private information of consumers and internet users from being used by corporations without consent. By mandate of a congressional vote that has already been officially signed by President Trump, that safeguard has been eliminated
According to the Daily Dot, this law, dubbed the “anti-privacy law,” indicates corporations won’t have to ask you for the right to use “sensitive customer information, such as precise geolocations, financial information, health information, children’s information, Social Security numbers, web browsing history, app usage history and the content of communications.” It is meant to challenge the competition provided by web-based giants such as Google and Facebook which are under the authority of the Federal Trade Commission, which has a history of being more lenient than the FCC.
The deregulatory movement was branded as an act to increase competition between them and telecommunication corporations such as Verizon, Comcast and AT&T. This essentially means that ISPs (Internet service providers) can take “your age, gender, nationality, shopping and banking habits, and even political or sexual orientation,” and sell it to advertisers without you even knowing it. It allows for these corporations to sell you as a product to anyone who is interested, and in turn, show you advertisements that appear to be ever so conveniently right up your alley.
The risk, however, is much greater than just advertisers tailoring the most relevant ads for you. Removing these regulations also places consumers at a higher chance of falling victim to cyber crimes. ISPs no longer have to publicly report any breaches to their systems. This means that after they’ve collected everything about you without telling you, if someone hacked into the organization, giving them access to everything they know about their customers, the ISP would have no obligation to inform you that they’ve been hacked. Every private detail about you could be in the hands of hundreds of people and you’d be absolutely none the wiser. This translates to the complete and total shattering of any semblance of internet privacy we have left.
