Craig_Hubley

Re health insurance risks, employment privacy risks, blanket buys etc, the answer is YES to all of these. Chuck Schumer raised some of the above points, and there is simply no protection against it happening.

ISP greed is absolutely not a sufficient protection, ISPs donate to GOP Senators and House races in large amounts, and thus clearly have goals far beyond making money off data commercially.

Including directly enabling the political campaigns of those they already support with donations, i.e. Republicans who stand against municipal broadband, against more public open fibre networks, etc.

For an idea of how dangerous and powerful such data release may be consider this http://scout.ai/story/the-rise-of-the-weaponized-ai-propaganda-machine and that it may already have influenced both Brexit & Trump's rise https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/26/us-billionaire-mercer-helped-back-brexit and that was only with public Facebook data. Imagine what they can do with ISP data, and with (much worse) #TrumpNSA data: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/after-working-for-trumps-campaign-british-data-firm-eyes-new-us-government-contracts/2017/02/17/a6dee3c6-f40c-11e6-8d72-263470bf0401_story.html

Whether YOU believe this is likely or not, realize THEY believe it https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/06/us/politics/cambridge-analytica.html?_r=0

Meaning, don't trust that they will. They are incompetent and that being well known actually protects them in court when they "leak" everything they have on you to #RobertMercer or whoever else.

It affects persons outside the US several ways:

1. It sets a precedent for similar legislation in other countries. It makes it almost impossible to support strong privacy in countries like China which is not particularly inclined to support it for other reasons.

2. It directly affects US politics since individually-targeted ads are already used in US elections to swing them every October, and this data is immensely useful to such efforts, and WILL be used for them. So if you are affected by US policy in any way this affects you.

3. Service providers for less basic services, like email, or other apps, may attempt to, or be coerced to, similarly release data or interpret their user agreements very broadly. They are already under extreme political pressure to do so, e.g. WhatsApp encryption, etc.

4. US courts have upheld restrictions against warrantless requests for such data, and the US has a strong "fruit of a poisoned tree" doctrine for evidence making illegally obtained evidence generally inadmissible. However if it is legal to buy information that would otherwise require a warrant, it is also legal to use it in so-called "fishing expeditions" to identify dissidents, target minorities, etc. Given the infiltration of KKK into local police departments proven by the FBI, and good reasons to believe the FBI itself is now sometimes manipulated for partisan reasons, these are very cogent concerns. Effectively domestic or foreign political actors can "buy their way around" warrant requirements in civil cases or even cause criminal ones to be initiated, as seems to have been the case with the so-called case against Anthony Weiner constructed to "frame" Hillary. (see all the #TrumpRussia threads re "Carolina Conspiracy" etc.). So if you are potentially affected by any US court case, this also affects you, even if you feel US policy is not your business or care.

5. When combined with data from the #TrumpNSA which #RobertMercer via his company #CambridgeAnalytica is already lobbying for, this broadband user data will be astonishingly useful to expand the capabilities of the #weaponizedAI described here https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/26/robert-mercer-breitbart-war-on-media-steve-bannon-donald-trump-nigel-farage (reporter:Carole Cadwalladr)

and here http://scout.ai/story/the-rise-of-the-weaponized-ai-propaganda-machine (reporters: Berit Anderson, Brett Horvath)

and here https://www.democracynow.org/2017/3/23/jane_mayer_on_robert_mercer_the (reporter: Jane Meyer)

and which was a primary reason for Tim Berners-Lee to announce this http://webfoundation.org/2017/02/delivering-digital-equality-the-web-foundations-2017-2022-strategy/

Sen. Chuck Schumer makes note on Twitter of "health & financial data" implying that cutting people off from health insurance (for say searching symptoms) either individually or in physical places that are suffering environmental illness, may be a strong motive for this law.

And using it to find "welfare cheats" and so on for use in the press for GOP purposes. The vote for the change was TOTALLY PARTISAN (literally every Republican except Rand Paul voted for it, and every Democrat and Independent against it) so that suggests there are extremely strong partisan reasons not being disclosed to the public.

Politically, for the 2018 elections in which the GOP fear they may lose the House especially if gerrymandering becomes challenged in court after recent precedents, the Senators voting "YES" for this would directly benefit from making such data available to #RobertMercer via his company #CambridgeAnalytica for its (so far exclusive to right-wing politicians) use to target political advertising. Some believe it is being used to also CREATE (Natural Language Generation) "fake news" headlines, as there is close association between such headlines appearing and the data gathered online (from existing sources).

This new broadband user data will be astonishingly useful to expand the capabilities of the #weaponizedAI described here https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/26/robert-mercer-breitbart-war-on-media-steve-bannon-donald-trump-nigel-farage (reporter:Carole Cadwalladr)

and here http://scout.ai/story/the-rise-of-the-weaponized-ai-propaganda-machine (reporters: Berit Anderson, Brett Horvath)

and here https://www.democracynow.org/2017/3/23/jane_mayer_on_robert_mercer_the (reporter: Jane Meyer)

and which was a primary reason for Tim Berners-Lee to announce this http://webfoundation.org/2017/02/delivering-digital-equality-the-web-foundations-2017-2022-strategy/

Combined also with #TrumpNSA data which CA / Mercers lobbied for https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/after-working-for-trumps-campaign-british-data-firm-eyes-new-us-government-contracts/2017/02/17/a6dee3c6-f40c-11e6-8d72-263470bf0401_story.html and their claims to have swung the 2016 election in MI, WI & PA https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/06/us/politics/cambridge-analytica.html?_r=0 it's evident that US right-wing politicians do believe this will work.

The ability to "alter people's web traffic" which certainly becomes far easier to do credibly under this new (lack of) rules, affects credibility of Internet evidence rather drastically. As we've seen in cases such as the criminal trial of O.J. Simpson, when the parties responsible for the custody chain of evidence are proven careless, racist, or motivated by anything other than neutral pursuit of justice, there can be grounds for finding the evidence is not "beyond a reasonable doubt", even if jurists think it's only say 2-5% likely to have been tampered with. That means many more "evidence was tampered with by the ISP for political or other reasons" false flag arguments in the courts, especially if the person on trial was involved in any cause contrary to any politician supported by the ISP. It's going to be nuts.