Online privacy

Inrupt, the start-up company founded by Sir Tim Berners-Lee to redesign the way the web works, is expanding its operational team and launching pilot projects in its quest to develop a “massively scalable, production-quality technology platform.” Berners-Lee said there had been a “rush of interest” from open source developers, entrepreneurs, tech company executives, and government officials to support Inrupt’s mission to decentralise the web and hand power back to users. But Inrupt now had to focus on the complexities of turning its underlying Solid technology into a scalable platform.

Overturning the Federal Communications Commission’s opt-in privacy rule resulted in lower prices for wired and wireless Internet service. Both these declines are about $40 per subscriber over the life of the subscription, which is similar to independent estimates of the per-subscriber cost of obtaining personal data consent from retail customers that are the basis for our quantitative analysis. By removing vertical pricing regulations, the Trump Administration’s “Restoring Internet Freedom” order will increase real incomes by more than $50 billion per year and consumer welfare by almost $40

The broadband industry is suing Maine to stop a Web-browsing privacy law similar to the one killed by Congress and President Donald Trump in 2017. Industry groups claim the state law violates First Amendment protections on free speech and the Supremacy Clause of the US Constitution. The Maine law was signed by Gov Janet Mills (D-ME) in June 2019 and is scheduled to take effect on July 1, 2020.

I’m introducing new legislation to create a Data Protection Agency and bring the protection of your privacy and freedom into the digital age. The US must make an effort to take the lead and do something about data protection. The Data Protection Act would address this head-on. My legislation would establish an independent federal agency, the Data Protection Agency, that would serve as a “referee” to define, arbitrate, and enforce rules to defend the protection of our personal data. This agency would have three core missions:

For more than a year, the [Federal Communications Commission] was silent after news reports alerted us that for just a few hundred dollars, shady middlemen could sell your location within a few hundred meters based on your wireless phone data. It’s chilling to consider what a black market could do with this data. It puts the safety and privacy of every American with a wireless phone at risk. Today this agency finally announced that this was a violation of the law. Millions and millions of Americans use a wireless device every day and didn’t sign up for or consent to this surveillance.

On Jan 31, 2020, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai wrote the following to various Members of Congress:

Americans prefer to keep certain information about themselves outside the purview of online searches. Given the option, 74% of US adults say it is more important to be able to “keep things about themselves from being searchable online,” while 23% say it is more important to be able to “discover potentially useful information about others.”

Avast, an antivirus program used by hundreds of millions of people around the world, is selling highly sensitive web browsing data to many of the world's biggest companies.

In 2020 and beyond, my principal focus will be ensuring that our communications networks and technologies support security, privacy, and our democratic values. Internet inequality is a persistent problem that is only growing in urgency. Low-income people, people of color, and people in rural areas either aren’t getting online or are making great sacrifices to get connected. For example, according to a Pew Research study, only 45 percent of adults with incomes under $30,000 have broadband at home. Solving this problem is a moral imperative.