Iowa’s congressional delegation is bravely protecting the internet

[Commentary] Some partisan activists have sought to leverage the public’s privacy concerns to advance their political agenda and have resorted to spreading accusations and false information that misleads the public. Immediately after the Congressional vote, the media was flooded with stories suggesting that internet privacy had been “repealed.” Other stories made misleading claims that Congress “voted to allow your web history to be sold to the highest bidder.” None of this is true. Congress did not repeal internet privacy. They kept the FTC’s two decades of privacy rules in place while preventing the inequitable Obama mandates from going into effect.

Congress did the right thing by stopping the FCC’s power grab to protect consumer privacy and indeed protect the internet itself. It is far better public policy to leave the internet in the free market to continue to bring us innovation after innovation which has transformed our lives for the better in the past generation. Take a moment and send an email of appreciation to the members of the Iowa delegation who stood up for you, your family, and your neighbors in this cause.

[Donald P. Racheter is president of the Public Interest Institute, a public policy research institute in Muscatine]