Web privacy furor previews coming ‘net neutrality war’

Bloomberg

The US Congress’s decision to invalidate a set of internet privacy rules from the Obama administration set off a firestorm this week. The change, which will allow service providers like AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. to collect and sell customers’ information without their permission, prompted ad campaigns from internet freedom groups shaming lawmakers and a small wave of service journalism about VPNs and other privacy tools.
Reactions in certain corners of the internet got hysterical pretty quickly. The creator of Cards Against Humanity said he’d buy the browsing histories of Republican lawmakers and post them publicly. In reality, the change won’t immediately create a shadowy new market for online voyeurism, but it does serve as a preview for a much bigger policy fight likely to unfold over the next several months. Republicans who want to roll back rules on net neutrality are expected to use this week as a template for revisiting the most contentious issue on the menu of internet policy topics.
Net neutrality has been the premier issue of internet policy wonks for years. Broadly speaking, it refers to regulations keeping internet providers from treating traffic differently based on its source. So with net neutrality in place, Comcast Corp. couldn’t tell Netflix Inc. that the streaming provider will have to pay to keep its videos from slowing down. In 2015, Tom Wheeler, then chairman of the FCC under Barack Obama, pushed through the most stringent net neutrality rules to date.
This week’s privacy rule and a potential reversal of net neutrality are both consistent with President Donald Trump’s agenda to undo what he sees as government overreach that holds back businesses. In the case of Tuesday’s vote in the House, lifting the restriction on internet providers from collecting and monetizing customer data could allow them to compete more directly with Google and Facebook Inc., which have used targeted advertising to create some of the most valuable businesses on earth. Congress’s move means the telecoms can get started, especially since it will legally preclude the Federal Communications Commission from passing similar rules in the future.
Ajit Pai, who Trump designated as FCC chairman this year, said in a statement that the privacy rules had been “designed to benefit one group of favored companies over another group of disfavored companies.” On Thursday, White House spokesman Sean Spicer echoed the remarks, in a way that some interpreted as a commitment to undo the broader net neutrality rules.
Gigi Sohn, who worked at Wheeler’s FCC as counselor to the chairman, said she sees this week’s positioning on the privacy rules as a precursor to Republicans arguing that the FCC shouldn’t regulate internet service providers at all. “They haven’t done that yet, but that’s what the net neutrality battle is going to be all about, and that’s what Spicer was somewhat signaling,” she said.
Net neutrality protections aren’t dead yet, but they’re effectively dormant. Pai’s FCC has made clear it won’t enforce them. Last month, the regulator dropped investigations into whether internet providers violated net neutrality rules through a practice known as zero-rating, where certain services are exempt from data caps on their wireless plans. Given his longstanding opposition to the rules, Pai is unlikely to open any new net neutrality investigations. Sohn, who’s now a fellow at the Open Society Foundations, expects to see the commission attempt to unwind the rules in earnest over the next few months.
When this happens, the two sides of the debate will frame the issue differently. Republicans will say they’re only looking to reverse a bureaucratic power grab, as Pai argued after the privacy vote.

‘Hackers boosting attack’

Bloomberg

Cyber-criminals and terrorists are increasingly pursuing destructive attacks on US government networks, and many federal agencies still fail to realize they’re an easy target, according to an executive at cybersecurity firm FireEye Inc.
FireEye has tracked an “uptrend’ from hackers attempting to break into both US military and civilian systems in order to destroy data, according to Tony Cole, FireEye’s vice president and Global Government chief technology officer.
“The biggest concern today is more destructive attacks,” Cole said Thursday in an interview on the sidelines of a Washington cyber conference. While countries often target other governments in cyber espionage, “we’re starting to see more terrorists trying to garner more cyber capabilities in this space as well,’’ he added.
Even after the 2015 breach of the Office of Personnel Management, which compromised data on 21.5 million individuals and has been linked to Chinese hackers, “everyone hasn’t learned the lessons from that yet,’’ Cole said.
“Many of the civilian organizations today haven’t woken up to that still.’’ Cole said he’s given input about a long-expected cybersecurity executive order to senior Trump administration officials, whom he declined to identify. He said he hopes the White House seeks input on the order from committees in Congress that have long worked with the private sector on cyber issues.