It Gets Worse

The Daddy State approacheth.

“A computer lets you make more mistakes faster than any other invention with the possible exceptions of handguns and Tequila.” 

--Mitch Ratcliffe

Quincy Larson at Free Code Camp:

Soon every mistake you’ve ever made online will not only be available to your internet service provider (ISP) — it will be available to any corporation or foreign government who wants to see those mistakes.

Thanks to last week’s US Senate decision (update March 28: and today’s House decision), ISPs can sell your entire web browsing history to literally anyone without your permission. The only rules that prevented this are all being repealed, and won’t be reinstated any time soon (it would take an act of congress).

ISPs can also sell any information they want from your online activity and mobile app usage — financial information, medical information, your children’s information, your social security number — even the contents of your emails.

They can even sell your geolocation information. That’s right, ISPs can take your exact physical location from minute to minute and sell it to a third party.

You might be wondering: who benefits from repealing these protections? Other than those four monopoly ISPs that control America’s “last mile” of internet cables and cell towers?

No one. No one else benefits in any way. Our privacy — and our nation’s security — have been diminished, just so a few mega-corporations can make a little extra cash.

I'll take exception to that last bit - about how nobody benefits in any way.  My basic skepticism (ie: my cynical - tho' perfectly justifiable - paranoia) is waving flags like it's laundry day at Redneck Central Headquarters.

This looks a whole lot like standard Political Duplicity - privacy snoops disguised as profiteers to give the illusion of separation from Officialdom, so nobody in government is accountable to voters for the inevitable fuckery.

And the bonus is that the ISP cartel can peddle our information to Da Gubmint (aka: the Lunker Customer everybody's always gunnin' for, so you know it'll happen), which will confer upon us the supreme privilege of paying them to fuck us over - again.

Cronies get richer

Congress Critters get re-elected

We get fucked

'Twas ever thus with the Radical Right, and ever thus 'twill be.

Anyway, privacy is pretty much the whole banana in a free state, and there seems to an even fuckier fuckery afoot.

Roe v Wade is based on the concept of a Consitutional Right To Privacy. If this ISP thing stands up to challenge in the courts, kiss that one good-bye. And then it's really open season on everybody's rights across the board.

Now, I realize I'm pretty close to the Slippery Slope Fallacy, but these things happen step-by-step, so I'm just trying to follow it out to the logical extreme. And it's not like we haven't seen some of this shit already. The bullshit SCOTUS ruling on Voting Rights comes to mind.

So how's that Gorsuch appointment looking now?