Net-privacy repeal awaits Trump’s pen

GOP says rule stifling; foes argue user data now for sale

WASHINGTON — Congress has sent President Donald Trump legislation that would kill an online privacy regulation, a move that critics say eventually could allow Internet providers such as Comcast, AT&T and Verizon to sell the browsing habits of their customers.

The Federal Communications Commission rule, issued in October, was designed to give consumers greater control over how Internet service providers share information. But critics said the rule would have stifled innovation and picked winners and losers among Internet companies.

The House on Tuesday voted 215-205 to reject the rule. The Senate voted Friday to block it.

The vote is part of an effort that Republicans have undertaken to void an array of regulations issued during the final months of Democratic President Barack Obama’s tenure. But the vote was close this time, with 15 Republicans siding with Democrats in the effort to keep the rule in place.

Republicans said former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, an Obama appointee, had created a slew of overbearing rules for broadband providers that would put them at a disadvantage relative to Internet companies such as Google and Netflix. Those Internet companies are not regulated by the

FCC but are increasingly in competition with telecommunications companies for online-streaming customers.

Lawmakers and Republican regulators at the FCC have said they plan to target the 2015 classification of broadband as a utility like service that is strapped with strong regulatory oversight. They also plan to seek to overturn Obama-era net-neutrality rules that forbade broadband providers from blocking, slowing down or charging extra for downloads of websites and apps.

“What we’ve created is confusion, and this is the way to rein in an agency that was overreaching,” said Rep. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., who introduced the House bill to overturn the privacy rules. She used the Congressional Review Act in a procedure that lets lawmakers scrap regulations recently created by government agencies.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D- Calif., said Republicans put profits

over the privacy concerns of Americans.

“Overwhelmingly, the American people do not agree with Republicans that this information should be sold, and it certainly should not be sold without your permission,” Pelosi said. “Our broadband providers know deeply personal information about us and our families.”

Internet companies like Google don’t have to ask for users’ permission before tracking what sites they visit. Republicans and industry groups have blasted that discrepancy, saying it was unfair and confusing for consumers.

But proponents of the privacy regulation argued that the company that sells Internet connections can see even more about consumers, such as every website they visit and with whom they exchange emails. That information would be particularly useful for advertisers and marketers.

Undoing the FCC regulation leaves people’s online information in a murky area. Experts say federal law still requires broadband providers to protect customer information

— but it doesn’t spell out how or what companies must do. That’s what the FCC rule aimed to do.

The Trump- appointed chairman of the FCC, Ajit Pai, is a critic of the broadband privacy rules and has said he wants to roll them back. He and other Republicans want a different federal agency, the Federal Trade Commission, to police privacy for both broadband companies such as AT&T and Internet companies such as Google. Republican lawmakers said they care about consumer privacy every bit as much as Democrats have.

House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R- Calif., said the FTC has acted as America’s online privacy regulator since the dawn of the Internet. He called the rule an effort to strip the agency of that role.

“The Internet has become the amazing tool that it is because it is largely left untouched by regulation — and that shouldn’t stop now,” McCarthy said.

Rep. Kevin Yoder, R-Kan., parted ways with his Republican colleagues on the issue.

He said the privacy protections were “common sense measures” that would have ensured Internet users continue to have control over their personal information.

“We don’t want the government having access to our information without our consent, and the same goes for private business,” Yoder said.

Broadband providers don’t currently fall under the trade commission’s jurisdiction, and advocates say it has historically been a weaker agency

than the FCC.

The American Civil Liberties Union urged Trump to veto the resolution.

“President Trump now has the opportunity to veto this resolution and show he is not just a president for CEOs but for all Americans,” said the ACLU’s Neema Singh Guliani.

Republicans repeatedly discounted the privacy benefits generated by the rule. Over the past two months, they’ve voted to repeal more than a dozen Obama-era regulations in the name of curbing government overreach. The criticism of their efforts was particularly harsh Tuesday.

“Lawmakers who voted in favor of this bill just sold out the American people to special interests,” said Rep. Jared Polis, D-Colo.