Washington: Republican lawmakers moved to dismantle landmark internet privacy protections for individuals on Thursday, the first decisive strike against telecommunications and technology regulations created during the Obama administration and a harbinger for more deregulation to come.
In a 50-48 vote largely along party lines, the Senate Republican majority voted Thursday to overturn the privacy rules, which had been created in October by the Federal Communications Commission.
The move means a company like Verizon or Comcast can continue tracking and sharing people's browsing and app activity without asking their permission. An individual's data collected by these companies also does not need to be secured with "reasonable measures" against hackers. The privacy rules, which had sought to address these issues, were scheduled to go into effect at the end of this year.
Thursday's vote begins a repeal of those regulations. Next week, the House is expected to mirror the Senate's action through the same Congressional Review Act procedure that allows Congress to overturn new agency rules. The House is expected to pass the resolution, which would then move to President Donald Trump to sign.
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The Senate's action alarmed consumer advocates and Democratic lawmakers, who warned that broadband providers have the widest view into the online habits of Americans. Without the rules, they said, such companies would have more power to collect data on people and sell sensitive information.
"These were the strongest online privacy rules to date, and this vote is a huge step backwards in consumer protection writ large," said Dallas Harris, a policy fellow for the consumer group Public Knowledge. "The rules asked that when things were sensitive, an internet service provider asked permission first before collecting. That's not a lot to ask."
The brisk and determined action of Congressional Republicans, just two months into Trump's administration, foreshadowed a broader rollback of tech and telecom policies that have drawn the ire of conservative lawmakers and companies such as AT&T;, Verizon and Charter. Republican lawmakers and the new chairman of the FCC, Ajit Pai, have said the privacy rules were onerous and unfairly strapped regulations on telecom carriers, but not on web companies such as Facebook and Google that also provide access to online content.
"It is unnecessary, confusing and adds another innovation-stifling regulation," Sen Jeff Flake, said this month when he introduced the resolution to overturn the rules.
The Senate's vote was a victory for giant telecommunications and cable companies. The FCC chairman under the Obama administration, Tom Wheeler, had declared that broadband would be regulated more heavily, by categorising the service in the same regulatory bucket as telephone services, which are viewed as utilities. That move acknowledged the importance of the internet for communications, education, work and commerce and the need to protect online users, Wheeler had said.
Broadband providers had balked and ramped up lobbying against the rules. Comcast and other broadband providers created the lobbying group 21st Century Privacy Coalition, led by a former Federal Trade Commission chairman, Jon Leibowitz, to defeat the broadband privacy rules.
"We appreciate today's Senate action to repeal unwarranted FCC rules that deny consumers consistent privacy protection online and violate competitive neutrality," the cable industry lobby group, NCTA-The Internet & Television Association, said in a statement Thursday.
With Republicans in charge across the government, AT&T; and Comcast are also poised to benefit from further deregulation. Since the presidential election, they have pushed the new Republican-led FCC, lawmakers and the White House to roll back net neutrality, the requirement that broadband providers give equal access to all content on the internet, saying the rules hamper their ability to invest in new networks and jobs.
The FCC chairman, Pai, has also talked with Republican allies in Congress about privacy and broadband classification. Pai has chipped away at more than a dozen regulations, including aspects of net neutrality and the program, known as Lifeline, that provides subsidies for broadband users in low-income households.
Consumer groups warned that internet users would suffer from the changes. The Federal Trade Commission, the consumer protection agency, is barred from overseeing broadband providers, so without the FCC privacy rules, the federal government will be a weaker watchdog over internet privacy, they said.
"Senate Republicans just made it easier for Americans' sensitive information about their health, finances and families to be used, shared and sold to the highest bidder without their permission," said Sen Edward J. Markey.
New York Times