THE CAUSE OF STUPIDITY......

 

LACK OF RELIABLE SERVICE FROM COMCAST /XFINITY SUCKS 12FEB19

MY post on comcast's & xfinity's facebook pages, and I keep posting them as replies to anyone who is suffering from the lack of service from comcast / xfinity.

‎Karl Slatts‎ to Xfinity

January 27 at 1:11 PM · 

Switching to comcast / xfinity is one of the worst decisions I have ever made. I have been a customer for about 4 months and have had to make literally dozens of phone calls to comcast / xfinity "customer service" and "technical service" and have had "techs" to my home 4 times and still when I turn on my TV too often get NO SIGNAL. The last time was Friday, 25 JAN 19. I am still waiting for the "supervisor" I spoke to, Tranetha, to call me back with information when the issues she said they are aware of will be fixed. It is also an ongoing battle to get credits on my bill for service not provided. And their "internet service" is nothing like what it is supposed to be. I have been and will keep telling people not to switch their service to comcast / xfinity.

Karl Slatts Karl Slatts
Today at 10:37 AM
I SUGGEST everyone with comcast/xfinity log in to their account, go to view help & support, go down the page to account & billing support, then down to talk to an agent to get a call. Once you have them on the line make the billing department aware of the issues you have with xfinitie's/comcast's lack of service and demand a credit on your bill. You must call them every day you have a problem with their tv and/or internet "service" and be sure to let them know the problem has been going on for over an hour to get a credit for the day. I just got off the phone with them and have a credit for 26 days of outage from 8 JAN to 12 FEB for a credit of $77, my last bill I got a credit of $95. I also reported problems the past 2 days and have a tech scheduled to come to my home for the 5th time this Friday as they still are not able to provide the service they sell. Switching to xfinity/comcast is the worst consumer decision I have ever made. MAKE them pay for their lack of service!

Tell your House Rep: Sign the discharge petition on the CRA to save net neutrality! & Senate votes to save net neutrality rules 11JUN&16MAI18

AFTER the Senate Democrats with 3 Republicans forced a vote and passed a CRA to restore net neutrality the CRA in the House is being pushed for a vote. Please sign the petition organized by Demand Progress and a plethora of allied organizations telling your representative to sign the discharge petition to bring the CRA to the House floor for a vote and then to vote for it and send the repeal to NOT MY pres drumpf/trump to sign and so restore net neutrality.

The House of Representatives has the opportunity to save net neutrality — or let it die. Tell the House: Sign the CRA discharge petition! SIGN THE PETITION

It's Monday, June 11: the day the FCC's repeal of net neutrality takes effect.

You may not notice any changes immediately. We don't know exactly when or how AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast will start throttling speeds and creating fast and slow lanes on the internet.

But we know it's coming. And that's why we need to force the House to save net neutrality.

Thanks to your activism, a bipartisan majority of senators voted to overturn the FCC and save net neutrality.

Now the fight is in the House, where we are gaining more support for the CRA resolution by the day. But we still need dozens more reps to sign a discharge petition to force a floor vote.

There's not a moment to lose. Every day the American people go without protections for a free and open internet will be one too many.

Tell your member of Congress: Sign the discharge petition for the CRA resolution to restore net neutrality!

The pundits and Big Cable lobbyists said we could never win the CRA resolution in the Senate, but we did.

We flooded the Senate with millions of calls and emails from constituents -- and we got all 49 members of the Democratic caucus, along with three Republicans, to pass the CRA. It’s going to be an uphill climb, but if we make sure our representatives hear us loud and clear, we can win in the House too.

86% of Americans oppose the repeal of net neutrality, including a huge majority of Republicans. With multiple Senate Republicans voting to overturn the FCC, we have a strong shot of winning the House if we get the support of all Democrats and about two dozen Republicans.

We proved the pundits wrong once, and will prove them wrong again. But we need to raise our voices and make sure every representative knows you expect them to stand on the side of Team Internet, and not Team Cable.

Tell the House: Sign the discharge petition and bring the CRA resolution to the floor for a vote today!

For the free and open internet,

Carli Stevenson
Campaigner
Demand Progress

Senate votes to save net neutrality rules

BY HARPER NEIDIG - 05/16/18 03:47 PM EDT

The Senate on Wednesday voted to reinstate the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) net neutrality rules, passing a bill that has little chance of advancing in the House but offers net neutrality supporters and Democrats a political rallying point for the midterm elections.

Democrats were able to force Wednesday’s vote using an obscure legislative tool known as the Congressional Review Act (CRA). CRA bills allow Congress, with a majority vote in each chamber and the president's signature, to overturn recent agency moves.

Three Republicans — Sens. Susan Collins (Maine), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and John Kennedy (La.) — joined the 49 Senate Democrats to pass the bill 52-47.

They argue that without the net neutrality regulations, which require internet service providers to treat all web traffic equally, companies such as Verizon and Comcast will be free to discriminate against certain content or boost their partner websites.

And despite the odds against the bill, Democrats see tremendous upside in the potential to use it as a campaign issue.

"A key question for anyone on the campaign trail in 2018 will now be, 'Do you support net neutrality?' " Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), who introduced the bill, said in a press conference after the vote.

Republican FCC Chairman Ajit Pai blasted Democrats for their "scare tactics" and said that his proposal is meant to correct the FCC's regulatory overreach during the Obama administration.

“It’s disappointing that Senate Democrats forced this resolution through by a narrow margin," Pai said in a statement. "But ultimately, I'm confident that their effort to reinstate heavy-handed government regulation of the internet will fail.”

The bill will have a much harder time in the House, where Democrats would need 25 Republicans to cross the aisle and join a discharge petition in order to bring it up for a vote.

Rep. Mike Doyle (D-Pa.) said he would be releasing a discharge petition on the bill on Thursday morning.

For their part, most Republicans argue that the net neutrality rules are unnecessary and onerous for broadband providers. The GOP has been urging Democrats to come to the negotiating table to work out a legislative replacement to the FCC rules, a move that is also backed by the broadband industry.

"I’m disappointed but not surprised that Democrats rejected my offer to write, consider, and amend legislation in a process open to ideas from both sides of the aisle," Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) said in a statement. "Despite this vote, I remain committed to finding a path to bipartisan protections for the internet and stand ready to work with my colleagues on the other side of the aisle when they are ready as well.”

But net neutrality supporters reject the idea that a Republican-controlled Congress could come up with protections as strong as the FCC rules. Legislation offered by GOP members leaves open the possibility that internet providers could create “fast lanes” by charging websites for faster speeds.

At a press conference Wednesday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) joined Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) in calling on Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) to bring the bill to the House floor — and rank-and-file Republicans to back it.

"We consider this one of the major issues of the 2018 campaign," Schumer told reporters.

Polls consistently show public support for net neutrality, with one from before the FCC’s repeal vote reporting that more than 80 percent of respondents — including 75 percent of Republicans and 89 percent of Democrats — wanted to see the rules stay on the books.

The FCC voted 3-2 along party lines in December to repeal its Obama-era Open Internet Order, a move the GOP hailed as a rollback of regulatory overreach.

"Following today’s vote, Americans will still be able to access the websites they want to visit. They will still be able to enjoy the services they want to enjoy," Pai said last year. "There will still be cops on the beat guarding a free and open internet. This is the way things were prior to 2015, and this is the way they will be once again."

Democrats on and off the panel have decried the action ever since.

"As a result of today’s misguided action, our broadband providers will get extraordinary new power from this agency," Democratic Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said at the time. "They will have the power to block websites, throttle services and censor online content. They will have the right to discriminate and favor the internet traffic of those companies with whom they have pay-for-play arrangements and the right to consign all others to a slow and bumpy road.”

Democrats and net neutrality supporters are also trying to fight the FCC’s repeal order in court, though the legal battle is likely to drag on for months.

Updated at 4:58 p.m

WE'RE (NOT) #1 ANYMORE....1MAR16

HOW you vote, we vote, will determine if we advance or fall further behind. 

INTERNET QUOTES

Net Neutrality Finally Dies at Ripe Old Age of 45 23APR14

THE FCC and Supreme Court might think they have satisfied corporate America's demands to kill Net Neutrality, but the people still have something to say about it. Our voices need to be raised yet again, loud and strong and uncompromising in our opposition to the rules the FCC is about to propose, that if adopted will be the final nail in the coffin. Free Press, Credo, and other activist organizations will be fighting this, and I will post what I can asking people to take part in the upcoming battle to keep the internet open and free. From Mother Jones....

—By Kevin Drum

| Wed Apr. 23, 2014 3:38 PM PDT

jrwasserman/Thinkstock

Apparently net neutrality is officially dead. The Wall Street Journal reports today that the FCC has given up on finding a legal avenue to enforce equal access and will instead propose rules that explicitly allow broadband suppliers to favor companies that pay them for faster pipes:

The Federal Communications Commission plans to propose new open Internet rules on Thursday that would allow content companies to pay Internet service providers for special access to consumers, according to a person familiar with the proposal.
The proposed rules would prevent the service providers from blocking or discriminating against specific websites, but would allow broadband providers to give some traffic preferential treatment, so long as such arrangements are available on "commercially reasonable" terms for all interested content companies. Whether the terms are commercially reasonable would be decided by the FCC on a case-by-case basis.
…The FCC's proposal would allow some forms of discrimination while preventing companies from slowing down or blocking specific websites, which likely won't satisfy all proponents of net neutrality, the concept that all Internet traffic should be treated equally. The Commission has also decided for now against reclassifying broadband as a public utility, which would subject ISPs to much greater regulation. However, the Commission has left the reclassification option on the table at present.

So Google and Microsoft and Netflix and other large, well-capitalized incumbents will pay for speedy service. Smaller companies that can't—or that ISPs just aren't interested in dealing with—will get whatever plodding service is left for everyone else. ISPs won't be allowed to deliberately slow down traffic from specific sites, but that's about all that's left of net neutrality. Once you've approved the notion of two-tier service, it hardly matters whether you're speeding up some of the sites or slowing down others.
This might have been inevitable, for both legal and commercial reasons. But that doesn't mean we have to like it.

Kevin Drum

Political Blogger

Kevin Drum is a political blogger for Mother Jones. For more of his stories, click here. RSS | Twitter

If You Liked This, You Might Also Like...

• WATCH: Goodbye Net Neutrality, Hello Guilded Age Internet [Fiore Cartoon]

  A federal appeals court shot down net neutrality, ushering in a new age of unequal Internet.

• Net Neutrality Takes a Big Hit in Court

  A judge rules that net neutrality rules can't be enforced unless broadband companies are classified as common carriers.

• The Internet’s Last Hope

  How the Federal Communications Commission can save the world (wide web).

 http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2014/04/net-neutrality-finally-dies-ripe-old-age-of-45

What To Do Now That The Heartbleed Bug Exposed The Internet & The Security Bug That Affects Most Of The Internet, Explained 9&8APR14

HERE'S some common sense advise about our use of computers and the threat from the Heartbleed virus.

by Elise Hu and Steve Henn

April 09, 2014 5:08 PM ET

Listen to the story

The Heartbleed bug has exposed up to two-thirds of the Internet to a security vulnerability.

iStockphoto

With a name like Heartbleed, it's no surprise it's bad. A vulnerability in OpenSSL — the Internet's most commonly used cryptographic library — , 64 kilobytes at a time, since March 2012.
"I would classify it as possibly the top bug that has hit the Internet that I've encountered, because of it being so widespread, because it's so hard to detect," says Andy Grant, a security analyst at iSEC Partners.
Are you affected? Well, users may not even realize they are using OpenSSL. But if you've ever noticed that websites you access show an "https" address, and a lock appears next to the address, you're on OpenSSL.

OpenSSL encrypts your data, including passwords and personal information, when it travels to a server. That means you may enter a password into your online banking site, but as the information for your transaction travels to your bank, it's jumbled up and made indecipherable — encrypted — as it's traveling through the Internet. This is supposed to keep hackers from eavesdropping.
Just before the bug was publicly disclosed, the people who maintain OpenSSL had fixed the vulnerability. But it's up to Internet companies to enter fixes for their own software — "swapping out" the cyberlocks that protected their data.
"You're probably protected from this point going forward," NPR's news applications developer Jeremy Bowers told member station WUNC on Wednesday. "The part that is dangerous is the [open vulnerability of the] previous two years and the possibility that at any point since 2012 that your [logins] for various places were compromised."
While individual users can't patch the holes, keep in mind some general Internet hygiene that we should be doing anyway.

• Change your password every few months. Because so many of our transactions are conducted online, this is a good practice to have no matter what. But to be extra safe, use , which typically means you need to know a piece of information — like a password — and have a piece of information, like a freshly generated pass code that shows up only on your personal smartphone, before getting into certain sites.
• Be a little leery of public Wi-Fi networks. If you are hopping on the Wi-Fi at Starbucks and other public places, limit your Internet behavior to the things you wouldn't mind people being able to find out and transactions that aren't especially sensitive.
• If you have VPN, use it. If your company or school offers a virtual private network, or VPN, connect that way. It's still fairly safe.
• Don't freak out. Sites like Amazon, Google and other major Internet companies have already secured themselves and fixed the vulnerabilities disclosed this week.
• Test to see which sites are vulnerable. that will tell you what

  The Security Bug That Affects Most Of The Internet, Explained

  by Jeremy Bowers

  April 08, 2014 4:19 PM ET
  

  A screen grab from a Heartbleed test Tuesday morning showed Yahoo was vulnerable. The company has since fixed the vulnerability.
  

  filippo.io/Heartbleed screengrab

  Editor's Note: A very serious bug with a scary name, , . The bug affects OpenSSL, a popular cryptographic library that is used to secure a huge chunk of the Internet's traffic. Even if you have never heard of OpenSSL, chances are, it's helped secure your data in some way. So I asked one of our trusted developers, and a nut for net security, Jeremy Bowers, to explain why Heartbleed's such a concern. — Elise Hu
  What's the problem?
  

  You trust your banking or Web mail sites to protect your communications when you see the little lock icon in your Web browser. This is why you're OK with typing passwords into Hotmail or your credit card numbers into Amazon.
  A popular piece of software called OpenSSL is used by Internet companies to provide this kind of security. On March 14, 2012, someone introduced a bug that would allow an attacker to get the "crown jewels," the encryption keys used to protect your communications directly from the companies themselves.
  With those keys, an attacker could eavesdrop on your communications with that company and/or impersonate that company, making it possible for them to harvest things like credit card numbers or passwords with relative ease.
  This isn't just a theoretical attack. Security researchers and passwords on local networks this morning. As of 2 p.m. ET Tuesday, Yahoo's servers were still vulnerable, . But by 3 p.m. ET, Yahoo told CNET it fixed the primary vulnerability on its main sites. Yahoo said:
  

  "As soon as we became aware of the issue, we began working to fix it. Our team has successfully made the appropriate corrections across the main Yahoo properties (Yahoo Homepage, Yahoo Search, Yahoo Mail, Yahoo Finance, Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Food, Yahoo Tech, Flickr, and Tumblr) and we are working to implement the fix across the rest of our sites right now. We're focused on providing the most secure experience possible for our users worldwide and are continuously working to protect our users' data."
  

  Yahoo didn't immediately offer advice to users about what they should do or what the effect on them is.
  Why is this so devastating?
  It's devastating for several reasons.
  First, OpenSSL is used very broadly, from big companies like Yahoo to small companies and mom-and-pop shops with shopping carts provided by a vendor. And it's hard for you to tell who's affected or when they've fixed it because companies don't broadcast which versions of OpenSSL they're running to people like you and me.
  

  

  “ "Change your password, since this could easily have been fished out of your communications at any point in the last two years."
  

  Second, in order to fix the bug and guarantee secure communications with you, each company has to update OpenSSL on every Internet-facing computer that they own. Worse, they also ought to revoke their SSL certificates — the "crown jewels" mentioned above — and generate new ones, based on the assumption that they could have been stolen at any point since March of 2012. This process could take a company days or even weeks to do.
  Finally, since the bug in OpenSSL has existed since March 14, 2012, there are more than two years of your communications that could have been intercepted by an attacker. Anything you've done — shopping at online stores, logging into your bank or your Web mail — could possibly have been compromised in the past. Because of the nature of the attack, you wouldn't know anything about it.
  What can I do about it?
  Sadly, you're at the mercy of the individual Internet companies to get their software patched and their SSL keys revoked and regenerated. Once you feel certain this has been done at a particular company, you really ought to change your password, since this could easily have been fished out of your communications at any point in the last two years.
  Additionally, it would be best to avoid things like shared Wi-Fi networks whenever possible as well, since attackers have their best access to your communications when you're sharing a network with them.
  But generally, the burden is on Internet companies and not you. That's what makes this so frustrating.
  Jeremy Bowers is a software developer on NPR's Visuals team. Reach him or on .
  
  kind of encryption a site uses, and when the encryption was last updated. have built a Web app that will test whether a site is still vulnerable to the Heartbleed bug. And Bluebox Security, a mobile security company, that will scan your Android phone to test whether it uses vulnerable versions of OpenSSL, either in its operating system or in any of your apps.

 http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/04/09/301006236/what-to-do-now-that-the-heartbleed-bug-exposed-the-internet

http://www.npr.org/blogs/alltechconsidered/2014/04/08/300602785/the-security-bug-that-affects-most-of-the-internet-explained 

STOP THE INTERNET CENSORSHIP ACT! 1DEZ11 & Five things to know about SOPA 16NOV11

THE gop and tea-baggers continue their assault on the internet, this time with legislation known as SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act). Following the commands of the powerful corporations that control them through their campaign contributions and lead by the right wing fanatic Rep lamar smith r TX, these advocates of less intrusive government are pushing for more government control because their corporate masters are demanding it. Online piracy is a problem that needs to be addressed, but this legislation is excessive and is actually more about control of the internet than online piracy. Join the campaign to stop it by calling or e mailing your Senators (e mail information here http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm ), and read the article explaining SOPA from the Washington Post.....

Click here for a sample script and the number to call: The only way we can stop this outright attack on the free Internet is to have more senators commit to vote against the legislation. Learn more about this campaign Stop Internet censorship! By the end of this week, the Senate may vote on a bill that would end the Internet as we know it. If it passes, the "Protect IP Act" would give corporate copyright holders the authority to demand that the government shut down any website without a court order. All they would need is to allege that the website contains copyrighted material. This bill has been rushed through Congress because big corporate interests like Comcast, Pfizer, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have spent millions of dollars lobbying for this censoring legislation.1 Call your Senators and tell them to protect our free and open Internet and oppose the Protect IP Act. Click here for a sample script and the number to call. This bill is an outright attack on our free Internet. If it passes, the government could shut down a website like YouTube if a member does something like post a video of themselves singing a copyrighted song. This gives corporations and the government the ability to determine what information you can consume on the Internet — a dangerous practice which, when committed by the Chinese and Iranian governments, is denounced by the American people and almost all of our elected representatives. Internet companies including Google, Mozilla, Facebook, and Twitter, say that "the bills as drafted would expose law-abiding U.S. Internet and technology companies to new uncertain liabilities, private rights of action, and technology mandates that would require monitoring of web sites."2 Call your Senators and tell them to protect our free and open Internet and oppose the Protect IP Act. Click here for a sample script and the number to call. Right now, only a small number of Democratic senators are standing up to corporate interests and voicing opposition to the bill. And the only way we can stop this outright attack on the free Internet is to have more senators commit to vote against the legislation. No matter whether your senators are Republicans or Democrats, it is important that you urge them to take a stand for Internet freedom. We need our Senators to come out in opposition to this bill and vote against Internet censorship. Call your Senators and tell them to protect our free and open Internet and oppose the Protect IP Act. Click here for a sample script and the number to call. Thank you for speaking out to protect our free and open internet. Ali Rozell, Campaign Manager CREDO Action from Working Assets 1."Five things to know about SOPA," The Washington Post, 11-16-2011. 2. "Mozilla Fights for the Internet's Future," Mozilla Blog, 11-15-2011.

Five things to know about SOPA

By Hayley Tsukayama

The Web is buzzing Wednesday about the Stop Online Piracy Act, the bill that was debated in a morning House Judiciary hearing. Here’s a quick cheat sheet on the issues around the bill.
What is SOPA?: The Stop Online Piracy Act, introduced last month by House Judiciary committee chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) is a bill aimed at — surprise, surprise — stopping online piracy. In part a companion bill to the Senate’s “Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act,” (Protect IP), the bill could punish Web companies that host unauthorized copyrighted content such as movies, songs or software.
Critics of the legislation say that it could increase lawsuits against Web companies or give the government too much power to shut down sites for hosting the content.
Who is for/against it?: You may be surprised at who’s teaming up on either side of this debate. The Motion Picture Association of America is, unsurprisingly, one of the lead voices supporting the bill, but it is joined by allies from the pharmaceutical industry, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and, yes, even the International Association of Firefighters, who say that piracy saps the tax dollars that support emergency services.
The list of opponents is even more varied, from Web firms such as Google (which has made a huge push against the bill) to progressive rights groups who say the bill could stifle free expression online to tea party activists who say that the measure gives far too much business-strangling power to the government.
Why all the buzz?: The bill is buzzy not only because it has the potential to affect a wide range of industries, but also because it’s got a lot of momentum behind it. Smith has said that he intends to markup the bill by the end of the year.
Despite the controversy, the bill has a great deal of bipartisan support, with 21 members joining Smith in co-sponsoring the legislation.
How does it compare to the Senate’s bill?: The Protect IP Act passed the Senate earlier this year. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) placed a hold on the bill, citing concerns about its potential to “muzzle speech and stifle innovation and economic growth.”
SOPA, critics say, goes even further than the Protect IP Act, because it grants the government even broader powers to go after Web sites hosting copyrighted content. Internet openness group Public Knowledge said that “SOPA is significantly worse than its Senate cousin” because it lowers the barriers to who can be considered liable for IP theft, saying that sites that don’t do enough to prevent piracy — such as search engines — can also be held liable for infringement.
How big of a problem is piracy?: Setting aside the debate of how it should be legislated, there’s evidence that online piracy is a serious financial problem for the country. The Chamber of Commerce estimates that U.S. companies lose $135 billion a year to counterfeiting and piracy.
Related stories:
Battle over Stop Online Piracy Act reaches fever pitch
Internet pioneers protest Senate anti-piracy bill
Web giants at odds with Chamber of Commerce over piracy bill

Stand Up for Net Neutrality in Virginia 24AUG11

ken cuccinelli is a drippings, and if you don't know what that is, it is someone of whom the best part of ran down their momma's leg. He isn't interested in protecting the rights and liberties of Virginians but is nothing more than a political whore willing serving the greed and lust for power of his rich and corporate pimps. He is a disgrace to Virginia politics and a disgrace to the legal profession. Here is his latest campaign wasting our tax dollars, add your name to the letter if you want to keep the internet open and free in VA!

Stand Up for Net Neutrality in Virginia

The fight for Net Neutrality has come to Virginia.
Vowing to overturn even the slightest attempt to protect an open Internet, Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has threatened to sue the FCC for daring to pass Net Neutrality rules.
We at Free Press are joining our friends at the Open Source Democracy Foundation (OSDF) in a stand against Cuccinelli. Please sign their letter to the Attorney General condemning his stance against free speech online:

Click here to add your name to the OSDF’s letter.

Cuccinelli isn’t content to sue the FCC himself. He’s also urging other attorneys general to jump on board as well.
The Virginia Attorney General has made overturning public interest protections a hallmark of his tenure. In just 18 months, he’s attacked federal and local environmental protections and aspects of the new federal health care law. Now he has it out for the open Internet.
Don’t let Net Neutrality fall prey to Cuccinelli’s attacks. Take action now with the OSDF to stop this misguided effort.
Thanks,
Josh Levy
Associate Campaign Director
Free Press Action Fund
SavetheInternet.com

SAVE THE INTERNET, DEFEND FREE SPEECH & NET NEUTRALITY 8APR11

THE gop/tea-bagger majority in the House along with gop and tea-bagger Senators continues it's assault on working and middle class America, this time kow-towing to the corporate greed of the giant phone and cable companies to grant them unrestricted control on the internet. They are blatant in their servitude to the greed of corporate America and have no qualms about the cost of the political prostitution of their offices on the average American family. Click the link to tell your Senators to reject the 'resolution of disapproval' and to defend Net Neutrality.

Moments ago, the House leadership passed the "Resolution of Disapproval." It's now en route to the Senate.
In their desperation to score political points, members of Congress are handing companies like AT&T and Comcast unlimited power to block popular websites and services, and interfere with our ability to connect with others.
President Obama has vowed to veto this resolution, but let's make sure it doesn't get that far. Earlier, you took the action below and urged both of your senators to "Save Free Speech Online."
Now, please help share this action via Facebook and Twitter so that others can join this effort. Thanks — Tim

Take Action Now Yesterday, the House voted to block the FCC from protecting our right to access an open Internet. If successful, the move would give phone and cable companies absolute, unrestricted power over the Internet. In the Senate, Republicans have introduced a "resolution of disapproval" that would strip the FCC of its authority to protect our right to free speech online.1 Both of these moves come at a time when phone and cable giants are already restricting our ability to connect with others and share information.2 We can stop the resolution in the Senate by getting 51 members to stand with us for online freedom: Tell Your Senators: Defend Our Right to Free Speech Online A House vote is on the books. It's now up to the Senate. If it doesn't stop this resolution, the FCC would be barred from enforcing its already weak Net Neutrality rule, and from acting in any way to protect Internet users against corporate abuses by AT&T, Comcast and Verizon. This is not a symbolic congressional exercise — it's a scorched-earth campaign that leaves Americans at the mercy of a corporate cartel. Imagine a world where these companies are allowed to do anything they want, ban any speech they don't like, charge anything they can get away with, and hold innovation hostage to their profit margins. If this resolution passes, there's nothing anyone could do about it. The resolution is filibuster-proof. We need at least 51 senators to beat it. Will your senators stand with us? Sign this letter to demand that your Senators protect free speech online. We will deliver it to their offices in Washington and provide you with tools to spread the word. Thanks for all you can do. Timothy Karr Campaign Director Free Press Action Fund www.freepress.net www.SavetheInternet.com 1. Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) and John Ensign (R-Nevada) introduced the “resolution of disapproval” on Wednesday. It already has 39 Republican cosponsors. In the House, Reps. Fred Upton (R-Michigan) and Greg Walden (R-Oregon) are pushing a similar measure. 2. FCC Commissioner Michael Copps outlined the recent history of “real threats” to Internet openness during his opening remarks Wednesday before the House Commerce Committee (pdf).

FCC AND THE END OF NET NEUTRALITY 21DEZ10

NEW FCC rules on the net do not do enough to keep the internet the free flowing source of information so many of us rely on and enjoy......this from the PCCC

---

BREAKING: Minutes ago, the FCC passed new rules -- written by corporations -- that will end Net Neutrality. For the first time in history, the U.S. government approved corporate censorship of the Internet, putting the future of online free speech at risk. Unbelievably, the person leading the charge was Obama appointee Julius Genachowski.
This violates President Obama's campaign promise to protect Net Neutrality, but some media are reporting the corporate spin that this is a "Net Neutrality compromise." It's not -- there's no such thing as half a First Amendment. We need to set the record straight.

If you're on Twitter, please click to share this: NEWS: @FCC breaks Obama promise, allows corporate censorship - no Net Neutrality rules. 3 things to know: bit.ly/eVKyWH @WhiteHouse

If you're on Facebook, click here to spread the word.

By sharing, you can help us spread the top 3 reasons the rules passed today are a giveaway to big corporations and break Obama's promise:

1. They enshrine different rules for wired and wireless Internet -- allowing big corporations to censor on your mobile phone
2. They allow corporations to set up tollbooths online, stifling new innovators like the next YouTube who can't pay the fees the old, crusty corporations can pay
3. For the first time, they embrace a "public Internet" for regular people vs. a "private Internet" with all the new innovations for corporations who pay more -- ending the Internet as we know it

A more detailed explanation is here. Please pass this email to your friends so they know not to believe the corporate spin.
And click here to share on Twitter and here to share on Facebook.
Thanks for being a bold progressive,
Jason Rosenbaum, Adam Green, Stephanie Taylor, and the PCCC team

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CALL THE FCC:SAVE THE INTERNET from MOVEON.ORG

I CALLED, and I hope you will too, and then report your call to MoveOn.org

The Google-Verizon plan to kill the open Internet has sparked a huge grassroots backlash.

Over 350,000 petition signatures were delivered at an unprecedented rally in front of Google headquarters in Silicon Valley, and the controversy has been covered everywhere from The Wall Street Journal to Jon Stewart.¹

Now, it's up to the Federal Communications Commission to save the Internet. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski says he supports net neutrality, but, under pressure from big corporate lobbyists, he hasn't done anything about it.²

The Google-Verizon deal has really increased public concern about this issue, and we now have a great chance to convince the FCC to stand up to the corporate lobbyists and save the Internet.

Can you take a moment and call the FCC? Tell them to say no to the Google-Verizon proposal and protect net neutrality. Here's where to call:

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski (pronounced "jenna-cow-ski")
202-418-1000

Then, click here to report the results of your call:

http://pol.moveon.org/call?cp_id=1439&tg=651&id=23127-17549061-G2DFXEx&t=3

If the FCC doesn't act, it will mean the end of the Internet as we know it. The Google-Verizon deal confirms that, without government action, corporations will create two separate, unequal sections of the Internet—one fast Internet for big business and an inferior, slow "public Internet" for you and me.³

The Google-Verizon proposal is just the latest example of giant corporations trying to write the very regulations that govern their behavior. BP shouldn't decide the rules for offshore drilling, Goldman Sachs shouldn't write regulations for Wall Street, and we must not let Google or Verizon decide how we can use the Internet.

The FCC has all the power it needs to make net neutrality the law of the land. The FCC simply must reverse a terrible Bush administration decision to deregulate broadband Internet service.⁴

Take a minute to call FCC Chairman Genachowski and tell him to stop delaying and immediately enact strong net neutrality regulations. Here's where to call:

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski (pronounced "jenna-cow-ski")
202-418-1000

Then, click here to report the results of your call:

http://pol.moveon.org/call?cp_id=1439&tg=651&id=23127-17549061-G2DFXEx&t=4

Thanks for all you do.

–Steven, Joan, Jeff, Duncan, and the rest of the team

Sources:

1. "Google Defends Its 'Net Neutrality' Plan," The Wall Street Journal, August 12, 2010
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=89947&id=23127-17549061-G2DFXEx&t=5

"Internet Exploiter," The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, August 17, 2010
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=90063&id=23127-17549061-G2DFXEx&t=6

2. "Chairman Genachowski. Can You Hear Us Now?" Save the Internet, August 19, 2010
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=90064&id=23127-17549061-G2DFXEx&t=7

3. "Free Press Urges Policymakers to Reject Google-Verizon Pact," press release, August 9, 2010
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=89934&id=23127-17549061-G2DFXEx&t=8

4. "Will the FCC reclassify broadband so it can do its job? So far, we don't know," Firedoglake, April 15, 2010
http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/41227

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Every Click You Make 13AUG10 from MOJO

I have no expectations of privacy at my job, after all my employer is paying me to work, not play on the net. I DO expect my personal privacy to be protected and respected when using my cell phone and my computer. I hope Sen. Pryor's legislation is finished and passed soon, it is bad enough the government can access our information through NSLs and other means of monitoring, we do not need anyone else watching and keeping this information. I have also created a separate page for this post on this blog so you can access it at any time and use the tool to check out tracking by websites not listed in this post.

— By Kevin Drum

| Fri Aug. 13, 2010 3:00 AM PDT

— Illustration: 1984 movie prop.

Last week the Wall Street Journal ran a terrific series of stories called "What They Know." The general subject was personal privacy—or the lack of it—in the digital world, and the first article in the series explained how websites routinely track your movements on the web and collect a genuinely astonishing amount of personal information about you in the process. The Journal examined 50 sites using a test computer and discovered that these sites collectively installed a total of 3,180 tracking files—an average of 63 tracking files per site:

The state of the art is growing increasingly intrusive, the Journal found. Some tracking files can record a person's keystrokes online and then transmit the text to a data-gathering company that analyzes it for content, tone and clues to a person's social connections. Other tracking files can re-spawn trackers that a person may have deleted.
....Some of the tracking files identified by the Journal were so detailed that they verged on being anonymous in name only. They enabled data-gathering companies to build personal profiles that could include age, gender, race, zip code, income, marital status and health concerns, along with recent purchases and favorite TV shows and movies.

A full list of the sites they examined is here. The most intrusive were dictionary.com and msn.com, which installed over 200 tracking files each. The least intrusive were craigslist.org and wikipedia.org.
What to do about this? Europe, which generally has better rules than the U.S. regarding the collection and use of personal data, actually has tighter regulations about how long online data should be stored. After all, the local police might want to use it someday. The Christian Science Monitor reports that this is finally provoking a reaction:

Across Europe, a backlash against the storage of private data is growing. Civil society groups like the European Federation of Journalists have criticized the practice, and in Germany almost 35,000 people, including Justice Minister Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger, sued their own government over the issue.
"There is a real problem in Europe today. It is a breach of the European Convention on Human Rights, which says that everyone has the right to a private life. That fundamental right has to extend into digital life," says Christian Engström, a member of the European Parliament for Sweden's controversial Pirate Party, elected on a platform of digital rights.

This tension means that governments aren't always eager to restrict the collection of personal data online. Beyond that, though, there are technical difficulties for those who want to prohibit the practice. When Congress passed the Do Not Call law in 2003, their job was easy: everyone has a telephone number, and all you have to do is put those numbers into a database and tell solicitors not to call them. But there's no equivalent of a phone number in the digital world. Your computer's ID is its IP address, but most IP addresses change regularly. There's no way of creating a "Do Not Track" database and telling online solicitors to keep their tracking files away from everyone who signs up.
Alternatively, as Harlan Yu wrote recently, we could adopt the opposite approach: instead of asking users to register, we could require solicitors to register and then rely on browser settings that would prevent their domains from installing tracking files. Unfortunately, this has technical drawbacks as well, so Yu suggests instead a new standard that would allow your browser to notify every site you visit that you don't wish to be tracked:

The browser could enable x-notrack for every HTTP connection, or for connections to only third party sites, or for connections to some set of user-specified sites. Upon receiving the signal not to track, the site would be prevented, by FTC regulation, from setting any persistent identifiers on the user’s machine or using any other side-channel mechanism to uniquely identify the browser and track the interaction.

This would, of course, require legislation that requires online sites to honor the x-notrack request. That's the bad news. The good news is that whatever the eventual solution, the problem itself is finally getting some attention on Capitol Hill: Politico reported last week that Sen. Mark Pryor (D–AR) is writing a bill "aiming to give consumers more control over their online data....The focus of the bill, which is still in rough draft form, will be giving consumers the ability to opt out of being tracked across the Web." So stay tuned.
In the meantime, the Journal's full package of privacy articles is here, and they're well worth browsing through. It includes pieces that explain web tracking, cell phone monitoring, how much these tracking services know about you, the role of big companies like Google and Microsoft, and even advice on how to avoid tracking. You can't avoid it all, but there are things you can do to minimize it.

 What They Know

The Wall Street Journal's What They Know series documents the new, cutting-edge uses of this Internet-tracking technology.

Marketers are spying on Internet users -- observing and remembering people's clicks, and building and selling detailed dossiers of their activities and interests. The Wall Street Journal's What They Know series documents the new, cutting-edge uses of this Internet-tracking technology. The Journal analyzed the tracking files installed on people's computers by the 50 most popular U.S. websites, plus WSJ.com. The Journal also built an "exposure index" -- to determine the degree to which each site exposes visitors to monitoring -- by studying the tracking technologies they install and the privacy policies that guide their use.

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