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Rounds Votes to Take Away Your Control of Your Online Data

Senator M. Michael Rounds likes to brag up his cred on cyberscurity. But he doesn’t seem to care much about your personal cyber-privacy. Yesterday Rounds, John Thune, and all but two absent Senate Republicans voted to let Internet service providers sell your data without your consent:

Senator Mike Rounds, DakotaCon, Tweeted 2016.04.01
Senator Mike Rounds, DakotaCon, Tweeted 2016.04.01

In a party-line 50-48 vote Thursday, senators approved a resolution to undo sweeping privacy rules adopted by the Obama-era Federal Communications Commission. If it becomes law, it would also prevent the FCC from setting similar rules again.

Those rules have not gone into effect, but they require ISPs to tell consumers what information is being collected and how it is being used or shared. Most notably, the rules require ISPs in some cases to get users’ explicit consent, for example to sell information such as geolocation or browsing history for advertising [Alina Selyukh, “U.S. Senate Votes to Repeal Obama-Era Internet Privacy Rules,” NPR: The Two-Way, 2017.03.23].

As NPR noted when the FCC passed these privacy protections in October, Internet service providers are not the only collectors and sellers of our personal data. Google, Facebook, Twitter, and other websites get all sorts of information about us, and the FCC rules would not have stopped them from cashing in on our searches and video views.

But individual websites see only a sliver of our online activity. Our online service providers see every byte that flows through our pipes and thus could provide the most comprehensive picture of our online habits to businesses eager to monetize our click-preferences.

Like his Führer President, Senator Rounds loves to puff up about issues like the Internet when he can make it sound like he’s fighting alien bad guys. But when comes to putting Americans first and protecting our online privacy rights from our own corporate raiders, Senator Rounds suddenly forgets the citizens for whom he works.

7 Comments

  1. Jana

    Sadly, he knows exactly who the citizens he works for are. Donors, bankers, insurance executives.

  2. Jana

    Love the pic. Dakota CON. It certainly is a Con job…which is almost the same as hoodwinked.

  3. Loren

    Mikey is just the Senate version of Kristi… what ever the daily talking point, that is his position. No thinking required!

  4. Douglas Wiken

    Rounds is lower than pond slime. South Dakota politics are bad enough without him, but he makes us a laughing stock around the country…and I don’t care who the hell picks up this post.

    But, the big government the GOP rails about is really the government fingers in your pockets and listening at the “door” Rounds, Noem, and Thune support. It is not the big government that delivers mail, builds roads, funds medical research, Builds libraries, provides educational TV, etc. etc.

  5. owen reitzel

    Thanks Rounds. How bad is this guy!

  6. Kristi

    And it’s things like this that make me glad I have a VPN… Frankly, though, the U.S. has some of the worst online privacy laws even before this.

  7. Adam

    Mike Rounds knows nothing about cyber security. ANYONE who thinks does – doesn’t know jack about cyber security.

    Mike ‘Snake-Weasel’ Rounds is COMPLETELY out of his element on the Senate Cyber Security Committee. How in the bloody hell did anyone ever think he belonged on that committee to begin with? What has he EVER done to demonstrate competence in that field? … And now he’s helping to allow the sale of our personal data to big data advertising agencies. Yay.

    South Dakota put him there for the same reason(s) we gave our state to Trump – we are easily scammed.

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