I know everyone is upset about the healthcare bill fiasco (as they should be), but can we talk about this US bill they passed to allow corporations to sell our browsing history? It is just depressing at this point. Similarly, has anyone with windows 10 noticed the advertising they plugged directly into your windows file browser? Disgusting. (You can remove the ads through your registry but every forced update that you can no longer opt out of fixes the "errors" in your registry....) I am convinced that all this advertising in every facet of our lives, and I am including pop culture, entertainment, and the news medias because what they deliver is often far from "news"...is all just a form of propaganda. People subconsciously soak all this stuff up and it bleeds out in how we act and think. I've gotten to the point where I will start to hear whatever bad thing it is that is new and just turn off the source. Exit the browser, turn the channel, change the subject. I try to stay informed but everything is set up to deserve a visceral/emotional response, and I am sick of it. It is getting harder and harder to keep it out of my life, and now the government has opened that door from us to the corporations.
The Democrats are functional with a Democratic President they adore; that's not much of a challenge. But hey, maybe it is considering the Republicans still fuck that up. How can they shit on this Obamacare for 7 years and not spend any of that time developing an alternative? That alone is a startling degree of idiocy. Someone else said it, but Trump doesn't want to get rid of Obamacare. He just doesn't want to own the potential failure of it.
Yeah that is the part that is scary. They had 7 years to create an alternative and then drum up support for it. But instead they crafted a bill that pissed off even more people than Obamacare. I don't know if I read it here, so I apologize if this is a repeat, but Trump and the GOP are like a dog that has been chasing a car for the last 8 years and now that they finally caught it, they have no idea what to do with it.
This is the inherent problem with conservative government. They are all about restoring a previous balance, while the world has moved on and that restoration is inherently impossible. I don't think anyone can look at the world we live in and say now is a good time to press the brakes on progress. Also, don't forget that Obamacare was built around ideas floated by Nixon and Mitt Romney, for fuck's sakes. Finally, I think this is the first of many failures of the Tangerine Tyrant to pass significant legislation. He doesn't have much capital in the way of sticks or carrots, and his bullying tactics simply won't get him far in government. Also, his tweets are starting to feel like the man-boy that cried wolf. I am very concerned with the internet privacy stuff, because that data would be used to essentially price gouge the fuck out of people. Use WebMD? Premiums just went up. Google "alcohol addiction"? Life insurance just got cancelled. Click on the "jobs" tab on LinkedIn? Time for a performance review at work, what a coincidence! Scary shit indeed.
Except as long as you're using HTTPS everywhere, they won't know what you're Googling, only the sites you go to. They can't snoop on your traffic and watch what you're doing in detail, only that you went to WebMD. If anything, TOR and VPN's are going to see a big rise in use. Sure, they'll know you went to a VPN, but that's all they'll know. I'd be very, very interested to see what information that they will sell...
Since many of you understand this better than me. Does using a vpn protect you from this? Or can your isp still monitor your use? I figure that there's no way to be 100% secure but is it worth the cost just for the added security/protection. (Maybe the wrong thread)
If you're using HTTPS then all your ISP should be able to see is a bunch of traffic going between you and your VPN.
Gah. My brain exploded. I'll provide a clear example when I'm back at my computer. I'll also start a new thread as well.
I may be wrong on the HTTPS part. Looks like VPNs use their own protocols. I think I was imagining them more like a proxy, which now that I think about it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
Https is a very specific web protocol. VPN is a network configuration that can implement any one of many protocols, like ipsec, ssl, etc. It's an encrypted network tunnel between your computer and your vpn provider that your browser would make https requests through that pop out on the vpn's public side so it looks like all internet traffic you are generating originates from there. It's done at a very low network level in your computer (or maybe your router) so that your browser has no idea it's even using a vpn, it's just making the requests it normally would.
I was thinking that the communication between your computer and the VPN host could be snooped by your ISP if the requests being forwarded weren't https, but if the whole thing is going over SSL or something similar that shouldn't matter.
That's the point of the VPN. The ISP can see that you have a vpn tunnel and can see that there is traffic going over it, but 100% of that traffic is encrypted and they have no idea what it is. Every web request and dns lookup and server response is part of that low level encrypted stream going to your VPN provider. They cannot read any of it.
We have a VPN now but will admit that I don't know how it is set up. My phone is still unprotected though, right? Can someone explain exactly what this legislation will affect?
So the bill passed the House, again basically along a party line vote. Every time I read "both parties are the same" I have the urge to strangle someone.
So remind me, which party will: -End pointless wars, military adventurism and respect sovereignty of foreign nations? -balance the budget? -represent the American public, not just corporations in the greatest arbitrage of wages, jobs, benefits, and trade to occur in several generations, if not ever, with the rest of the globe? -respect your rights, not just your right to guns or your right to abort babies? -limit the scope of Government to what is delineated in the founding documents of the country? -end the prison state: people in jail for victimless crimes or nothing more than debt?
Just because Angelina Jolie and my ex both have two eyes, a pair of kidneys, and long hair doesn't mean it doesn't matter which one I'm sleeping with.
If they both steal from you, lie to you, cheat on you, shit talk you and generally try to ruin your life then it doesn't matter a bit which one you are fucking with. I should say it wouldn't matter matter to me, if it matters to you then I would say you need a new perspective and deserve better treatment....or maybe you don't, I don't know.
I agree that there are big important issues that the Democrats and Republicans are the same or similar on, but there are also big important issues (in some cases the most important issues the country faces) that they are wildly opposed on. Those dissimilarities matter a great deal, and if we can't even be bothered to vote for the better option when it exists, what hope do we have to move one of the parties off their position on issues where we don't already have a better option?
The ISP's are a monopoly in most cases, explicitly interested in deepening the fucking they give their customers. Funny how the Republicans often find themselves on the side of monopolies so often. Silicon Valley is a bit more nebulous, but seems intent on generally creating value and innovation, as well as using the existing lay of the land as a building block, because they are not a monopoly. It is, unfortunately, how you frame the discussion, but if the Republicans were truly the party of personal liberty, then bills like that should have been shut down. I agree with you that NO ONE in either party has the balls to stand up to corporations in general, and that's a huge crisis in our government, because ultimately corporate power can't go unchecked forever.