RADNOR >> Cybersecurity experts are preparing for a fundamental shift in the post-Net Neutrality world in which President Donald Trump is expected to kill with a signature this week.
Approved in both the House and the Senate was a measure that repeals the Obama-era rules known at Net Neutrality that would have prohibited internet service providers (ISPs) from selling or sharing web browsing habits of its consumer base. The measure needs just the okay by Trump to open the floodgates of user-based content.
The Federal Communications Commission’s rules, which were passed in October, set limits on how ISPs, like Comcast and Verizon, could use consumer’s information on browsing habits, app usage history and location information.
The updating on those rules was said to protect consumers, giving them more control over the data they generate. However, cybersecurity experts say otherwise. James Solderitsch, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at Villanova University, who cut his teeth at Accenture, a cybersecurity consultant, and worked in research and development at Intech Labs, an IT service provider, said ISPs will be able to collect all of its users’ traffic.
“How far they will go remains to be seen,” Solderitsch said.
With a vote of 215-205 in the House, and a narrow 50-48 vote in the Senate, the Obama regulations that would have restricted the FCC’s ability to share user data, which had yet to go into effect, will be negated in perpetuity.
By overturning the restrictions under the Congressional Review Act it precludes the FCC from reinstating the rules in the future, a point which U.S. Sen. Bob Casey, D-Pa., said Senate Democrats took issue with. The Democrats voted “nay” in a block.
“I believe using this special procedural maneuver to overturn an internet privacy rule is the wrong approach,” Casey wrote in a statement. “This resolution not only overturns the FCC’s broadband privacy rule, but prevents any substantially similar rule from being passed ever in the future.”
Republicans in the House and Senate argued that the extra regulation on ISPs should not enable the FCC to apply privacy rules to Internet providers and not individual websites, which are monitored by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).
“The actions taken by Congress do nothing to weaken longstanding federal and state privacy laws or investigatory powers,” wrote U.S. Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., in a statement released by spokesman Steve Kelly. “Rather, Congress rolled back a regulation passed by President Obama’s FCC in late 2016 which does not equally apply privacy rules across all online entities.”
U.S. Reps. Ryan Costello, R-6 of West Chester, and Pat Meehan, R-7 of Chadds Ford, both voted for the bill. Costello wrote an opinion piece published online called “Combatting Federal Agency Overreach and Creating Equitable Regulations in the Internet Ecosystem.”
“This proposed asymmetric regulatory system governing the Internet ?-? and the need to constantly identify what online data falls under which statute ?- would create confusion for both consumers and business operations,” he wrote.
However, websites like Facebook and Google already mine the information generated by users, which is regulated by the FTC. But now Internet providers will be able to enjoy the same privileges. Consumers can typically pick and choose the websites they frequent online, the choice between ISPs is often more limited and typically very difficult and expensive to switch mid-contract.
Comcast Corp. posted a statement to its webpage pledging to preserve customers’ privacy.
“We do not sell our broadband customers’ individual web browsing history. We did not do it before the FCC’s rules were adopted, and we have no plans to do so,” the statement reads.
Some areas, for instance, only have one option available – Comcast once had a 10-year exclusivity agreement with the city of Philadelphia.
“I think some of the spin on the story is that we were allowing Google and Facebook to make money on our data, so they’re asking, ‘Why are you taking it away from other companies?'” Solderitsch said. “But, it’s not the same.”
“You’re going there because the ISPs knows what corresponds to that URL and route traffic to the end point.”
To protect from data mining by ISPs, many news sites are offering tutorials in setting up a virtual private network (VPN), which typically is used by companies to share data over the internet as if they were connected to one private network. However, consumers can also use a VPN to disguise their Internet traffic through an external port.
With a VPN in place, users’ data passes through an external, encrypted source, which prevents anyone from seeing or modifying the traffic. The data will look as if it originates from the external port, not the home computer or mobile device.
Solderitsch said that the web browser Opera offers built-in VPN, and recommends browsing websites with HTTPS encryption.
The attempts by the right to categorize the internet as one big “ecosystem” in which the service providers and the websites are one in the same. Costello referred to ISPs as “one segment of the Internet” rather than acknowledging that it is less a visible, browsable webpage, and more the carrier that makes access to those webpages possible.
Meehan, too, said the repeal dug through the “poorly conceived and poorly executed” set of regulations indicative of overly bureaucratic Washingtonian politics.
“It was classic Washington: Two federal agencies, working at cross-purposes, creating a regulatory maze and forcing American companies to navigate it,” wrote Meehan, who chaired the House Homeland Security Committee’s cybersecurity subcommittee.
However, Solderitsch said that the new era of conscious web browsing may pave the way for smaller ISPs to offer secure networks as a consumer incentive.
“Unplugging might be the reaction, people might limit their use of the internet out fear of privacy, it could reduce business,” he said. “And there’s a business incentive to look for consumers leery of privacy issues with a cyber intrusion campaign.”
