Item — HN Reader

"..the privacy laws adapted by the FCC in the past have only been applied to ISPs and not other edge providers... So in short, they are just bad laws."

I feel that builds the argument that they should be implemented more widely, not abandoned. Also, ISPs are targeted specifically not because people believe they are malicious actors, but because they are literally the gateway to everything, impacting you just about any time you use the internet. Think how much it would say about you as a person in detailed logs from your service provider.

1 comments

Yes, the argument that they should be widely implemented is definitely implied and valid.

Regarding your analogy, end to end encrypted content is not readable by the ISP, they can see metadata for encrypted content, but not the content itself. Whereas webmail providers can see the content[1]. Another example is Google who run a public DNS server. Another example is Apple keeping all phone numbers[2]. So the data that edge providers have access to(in theory) is fairly significant. I think definitely to be consistent the law has to be an all or nothing kind of thing.

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/04/yahoo-scans-email-for-nsa/

[2] http://www.macworld.com/article/3125570/iphone-ipad/apple-ke...

There's a competitive market in online services. FastMail scans only for spam, and you can opt out.[1] Microsoft claims not to use email for ad targeting.[2] Google DNS is a standalone service with a reasonable, detailed privacy policy.[3] iMessage is optional even if you choose to use Apple platforms.

Meanwhile, most US households have only one option for 25+ Mbps Internet service because the FCC dismantled competition among residential ISPs. If ISPs don't want the responsibilities that come with monopoly power, they should stop fighting to preserve it.

[1] https://www.fastmail.com/about/privacy.html

[2] https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-US/

[3] https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/privacy