The House Passes Resolution Letting ISPs Sell Your Data

So this may be a dumb question but is there any accountability for what happens to donations? Do they get used for party expenses or are Representatives able to spend it as they please?

 

@Jason Tate Have you seen these articles? VPNs Won’t Save You from Congress’ Internet Privacy Giveaway

 

Pretty inflammatory headline for what it actually says in the article (which is no shit sort of stuff and does not make the argument for what the headline says):

The most obvious: You need to trust your VPN provider not to track you and sell your data itself.

While using a VPN, you might find that you can’t connect to all the sites and services you’re used to using. Netflix, for example, tries to block all VPNs to prevent people from accessing content not licensed in their home countries. Others sites may block particular VPN providers used by malicious hackers or criminals to cover their tracks. It can be hard to tell if you can’t access a particular site because you’ve misconfigured your VPN software, the site is down, or if a company has blocked your VPN provider from accessing a site.

Basically, yeah, you gotta trust your VPN, and you should research them and know what your threat profile is and what you're using it for.

I agree with the final premise of that article: that our government should be fighting for our privacy, but I don't think their clickbait headline is helpful nor do I find their argument compelling. For more information on some of the other privacy issues with VPNs and other things you can do (like roll your own) the second Ars link I posted has a more detailed look, but, by and large — I still recommend, for most people, a pretty simple VPN if you're looking to better cover your internet ass, especially while connected to a public wifi. If you pick a good one, their incentives for your privacy are aligned far more than your ISPs.

 

The Top 10 Things Every Voter Should Know About Money-in-Politics | OpenSecrets

Pretty much depends where it comes from, to who, on how it can be spent.

Politicians Have Numerous Options for Unused Campaign Cash After Leaving Elected Office - OpenSecrets Blog
From $25 to $10,000,000: A Guide to Political Donations - Campaign Finance - Election 2012 - NYTimes.com

I mean:

Rep. 'iPhone' Chaffetz spent $3,000 of his campaign funds at Apple store in Utah

 

Thanks for the links, I'm not all that familiar with the US political system so it's interesting (in a "holy crap that's messed" up kind of way). It seems like there is a lot of energy spent on trying to circumvent the law and systems in place to allow people/companies to spend as much money as they want on campaigns and candidates.

 

Basically ... yeah.

It's not great. Haha.

 

I rarely ever go on Facebook, and I shut down my Twitter a few weeks back because I got sick of the rampant awful behavior, but I'm genuinely curious to see what other people's feeds look like these days in terms of friends or relatives that voted for Trump. How are they reacting to news like this or the healthcare debacle? One of the worst things about the entire election cycle was seeing how unmoved his supporters were regardless of what awful thing he said on the campaign trail, but now that he's in office and actually enacting garbage that will negatively effect even those who liked him, are they saying anything or keeping quiet? I realize most people are too proud to admit they were wrong, but I wonder if anyone has seen even the slightest backtracking.

 

Some days this is the only account that makes me have some faith in humanity:

Trump Regrets (@Trump_Regrets) | Twitter

 

The ISPs already had the right to sell your data. This doesn't actually change anything. Just doesn't change current rules to be better.

 

Tor Project: Anonymity Online

 

As both links explain better than me, these rules were passed last year to require opt-in and set to go into effect this month. This changes that.

 

Something like this is exactly what I was looking for. Thanks, Jason.

 

Ahh gotcha. That makes sense.

 

We have a side of our family that are HEAVY Trump supporters, and they've been dead silent (outside of the occasional "snowflake" comment.) For the most part though, I told a lot of them to fuck off and they've deleted me since.

Also, a lot memes. They're not intelligent people by any means, so they post a lot of memes that they're taking in a very literal sense.

 

@Jason Tate Which VPN would you suggest for iOS?

 

Probably Cloak. It's just stupid easy to use.

 

That's disheartening beyond words.

 

Been looking into this the past few days, and trying to decide between Cloak and NordVPN. I like the fact that Cloak seems to be designed with Apple devices in mind.