 So my name is Jeremy Galula. I'm a senior staff technologist at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. And my name's Ernesto Falcone. I'm the Legislative Counsel at EFF. My work primarily is focused in Washington D.C. with Congress, and I also work in the state legislatures representing EFF and the issues we fight on on civil liberties and technology. So, you know, we're joining us now because right now at this very second, the United States Senate is holding a debate over whether or not we're going to have consumer privacy when we go online. There is a vote pending, you know, I've looked to my left because we actually have the Senate floor live in front of us. And this is a vote on whether the Federal Communications Commission can enforce the law to protect your privacy when you go online, namely controlling the power of cable and telephone companies who have an extraordinary window into your activities when you use the Internet. Jeremy, why don't you kind of give people kind of the perspective of to what extent are we talking about the power of the ISP? Because I think regularly I see a lot of folks think they don't have any, you know, there's no difference between cable and telephone companies and kind of what the Internet companies can see, Google and YouTube and the rest. But there is some pretty fundamental differences. Totally. So to be clear what the Senate's voting on is the FCC passed these rules that would keep your Internet service provider from spying on your traffic, snooping through it, inserting ads into your traffic, basically just playing with your Internet connection for something other than providing you Internet service. And when you think about it, you know, as Ernie said, you know, there's a lot of tracking going online, companies like Google and Facebook, ad networks, analytics companies. But the difference, the real difference between say what your ISP can see and what a company like, you know, Google or Facebook can see is Google or Facebook only see the data that your browser sends to their websites. When you're on Facebook, Google isn't seeing anything. When you're on Google, Facebook isn't seeing anything and vice versa. Plus, you can install tracker blockers onto your into your browser that just block this third party tracking outright. EFF has one. It's called Privacy Badger. It's free. It's easy to install in Chrome or Firefox. And so you can really easily just disappear from this sort of tracking. But you can't disappear from your ISP's tracking. Your ISP sees everything you send because you're sending the data through them, you know, when you go to a website. They're the ones who carry the request back and forth. And so if these rules get repealed, it'll give ISPs a lot of latitude in what they can do. So they could do things like, you know, just straight up sell your data to marketers. That's something that these rules would prevent. That's something they want to do. They're already doing to some extent right now. And it would allow them to do it even more. So, you know, just saying, you know, I know that there's this person, you know, this single white male age, you know, 32 to 42 or whatever who lives in this zip code or something who just browsed for, you know, skis because he's going on a ski vacation or something. You know, they can sell that data to marketers straight up. They could also snoop through your traffic to determine that sort of thing. You know, what are you browsing for? And then inject ads. They could insert ads into your browsing. So you'll actually see ads on top of the ads that already exist, which I don't think anybody wants in their internet browsing. They can do things like pre-install spyware on your phone. So this is mobile ISPs too. We're talking not just the Comcasts and charters of the world. We're talking Sprint, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile. And so when you buy a phone from them, they could pre-install spyware on it that tells them, you know, these are the websites that Jeremy is visiting. These are the websites Ernie is visiting. This is what he's browsing for. And the real annoying thing there is that depending on how they install it and what it does, even if your traffic is encrypted, so a lot of people say, oh, there's nothing to worry about because I use, you know, all my sensitive traffic is encrypted over HTTPS, you could easily, if you were a phone company, install something on someone's phone before you sell it to them that just bypasses that encryption. Another one that's really, really creepy is basically inserting tracking IDs into your traffic. And so this is another one where basically the ISP could say, I want to make it, you know, you've installed Privacy Badger and it's, you know, you're blocking all these tracking cookies. I'm just going to override that and insert more tracking cookies and you can't do anything about it. And we saw Verizon do this. This was that whole zombie cookie issue, the undeletable, undetectable cookie that Verizon said, oh, we'll just insert this into all of our customers' traffic. So there's a lot of really disturbing things and outrageous things. And to be clear, these are all things that these companies have already done. So we know they can do it. We know they've done it before. We know they want to do it. And our concern is that without these rules, they're going to do it again in the future. Well, and let's kind of go into kind of what the rule. So, you know, it's worthwhile to remember that the companies, when they engage in these activities, were kind of entering a legal gray space. They had to really debate whether or not they was even legal for them to do it. And the FCC, when they updated the Privacy Rules a little about a year ago, less than a year ago, I mean, pretty much put a red line and says, no, not lawful. Because even that Verizon issue, they got in trouble at the end of the day, correct? They did. But it's unclear, you know, if this sort of rule is rolled back, whether or not the FCC could enforce it again. So one thing I'm curious, Ernesto, is, you know, these rules sound pretty common sense straightforward. Get the consumer's consent before you use their private information for something besides providing them Internet access. So who is pushing back against this? Which, I mean, obviously the ISPs are because they want to sell the data. But which lawmakers, I mean, this sounds like a pretty underhanded thing to do. I mean, it sounds very much sort of like the swamp culture that Republicans have been fighting against and saying they're going to get rid of, you know, draining the swamp in D.C. So who's actually going along with the ISPs here? So the primary author of the Senate bill that's moving right now is Senator Jeff Flake from Arizona. And I think what the cable and telephone industry have done is essentially convinced him and a handful of legislators are pushing along that what they're doing is no big deal, right? That what they're doing is not real seismically changing the privacy rights of American consumers. And at this moment, these senators believe that. They're incorrect when they think that. But that's what they think. And they're misled at best or misguided at worst. It's worthwhile to remember that these companies have been controlled in this sense in terms of they have to have your permission before they use your personal information for the better part of 20 years. And right now they just see an opportunity to kind of bamboozle Congress. You know, this is namely like Comcast, Rise and AT&T, kind of the biggest players who have legions of lobbyists in D.C. that actively talk to Congress, that have basically convinced them that repealing the current SEC broadband rules will somehow protect privacy because there's an underlying law that regulates them today. But at the same time, you know, undo what they call harmful regulation, which is essentially bogus to say the in kind terms. So which Senate, I mean, you mentioned Jeff Flake from Arizona, but like how do we think people are going to vote on this? You know, this vote's going to be happening in 20 minutes. Like how do we think it's going to shake down? You know, I think it's tightly divided in the United States Senate right now. And what I really want to convey to folks is if you have a moment to pick up the phone and call your senator and to tell them where you stand on consumer privacy, demand that they stand up for your legal right to have your information protected when you go online. So to be clear, you can go to act.eff.org and right on the page right there, there is a, you can click, you'll get to our action alert where you can, we will automatically connect you. You punch in your address will automatically connect you to your senators and representatives. Are there particular senators we're targeting? Yeah, we're pushing for every single senator, but the reality is about 30 senators or so have already come out in favor of ending consumer privacy. If you go to the bill is SJ Res 34. And you can see who it is on the co-sponsor list. The folks we're targeting and pushing hard are folks who have made their opinion public. Senators from, Susan Collins from Maine for example, Senator Portman from Ohio. So if I list out states, if you're in these states, call those senators ASAP. Yeah, so let's be clear. These are the senators we think we can convince. Unfortunately, this has become a very partisan issue and we think it's going to be almost a party line vote. And so what we need to get are Republican senators who either haven't made up their mind yet. Maybe they're going to be facing reelection within a year or two. And so we need to get them to vote no on this. Yeah, and let me kind of, it's worthwhile to explain why this is really kind of a Senate Republican player right now is, one, they're the majority party in the United States Senate that control the agenda. And two, the procedure that Senator Flake from Arizona, the author, is pursuing is called the Congressional Review Act, which allows him to bypass the filibuster which would have required eight Democratic senators to have agreed. So really, for the most part, this is within the ballpark of the Senate Republicans have decided as majority party whether they would agree by 51 votes or not. And they have 53 seats in the United States Senate and the Democrats have 47, sorry, they have 52 and the Democrats have 48. So just purely on a 52 vote margin, they can get this through to the House. The next step would be obviously the United States House will then take it up and the fight will continue from there. Yeah, so again, we're targeting senators like, you said Susan Collins? Yeah, I mean, if you look at the states that... Portman in Ohio, Toomey in Pennsylvania. There's Senator Garner from Colorado. These are senators who have not taken a public position that if three of them decided to vote no right now in the next 30 to 45 minutes or withheld their support by abstaining from voting altogether, if they're undecided, then they would kill the bill. They would prevent it from moving forward. So we've got some questions. So I'll just jump in the first one actually we get is, you know, can I just browse in incognito mode to avoid being tracked by my ISP? Unfortunately, the answer is no. All incognito mode does on your browser is it basically deletes cookies when you close the browser. So it actually helps you avoid being tracked by companies like Google or Facebook, DoubleClick, it doesn't do anything for tracking by your ISP because it doesn't change how your traffic is sent. Your ISP can still see all of the traffic. The only way you could avoid being tracked by your ISP if these rules get repealed is using a VPN and that costs money. That just straight up... The Republicans in Congress are basically saying, we're going to say that people have to pay a privacy tax if they want to keep their data private and that'll take the form of a VPN. And, you know, we think that's ridiculous. We think that you should be able to browse freely without having to worry if your ISP is snooping on you. Well, and if I can add to that too, I mean, what's ironic in all this is Senator Flake and the proponents of repealing these rules are arguing that the FCC overreached, right? And that's a common refrain. The government overreached and frankly we see very often that the federal government does overreach in other instances. But sometimes the government gets it right, right? Like once in a while there's times where, and in this instance, the rules are your ISP can't look in your browsing history. The ISP cannot know what you do on applications. And we see no reason why that's not a good rule, right? We see that that kind of squares the rules that govern cable and telephone back in place of where Congress decided in the 90s. And if you look at, I mean, that's the unfortunate thing, is I think senators have forgotten their own decisions as Congress, but they've told the FCC 20 years ago. Consumers have the right to decide by, you know, whether or not their information is used in ways they don't agree. And the FCC adopted a consent regime. So you're going to see, undoubtedly, if you confront your senator and they voted for this today, you're going to see them kind of do this game of saying, I believe in privacy and the FCC was wrong and where it went. And that somehow their vote didn't actually undermine your legal right to privacy. All that's ridiculous. It's all obfuscation to try to get away from the fact that the people who are pushing them to do it is your cable company, your telephone company, who see an opportunity right now when Congress is engaging in multiple repeals of multiple things in all directions to kind of exploit the ignorance of lawmakers who decided that these companies do not have the right to use your information without your permission. So another question we get is, you know, isn't the federal... So we've been talking about, to be clear, we say, FTC, Federal Communications Commission. But isn't the Federal Trade Commission, the FTC, the one that's supposed to be regulating privacy? So both agencies that are involved in this space and have been involved for a long time. The extraordinary problem right now that we're facing is that if you're living in the states of California, Oregon, Washington, Montana, Nevada, Alaska, Hawaii, and Arizona, ironically enough, given that's the senator pushing this, the Ninth Circuit recently ruled that the FTC does not have the power to discipline what are called common carriers, which is essentially your telephone and cable company. Wait, so you're saying that the court said that the FTC can't regulate, can't discipline, like if my ISP sells my data without my permission, the FTC can't do it because the court said so. So it's a recent, yeah, it's a recent decision. This is AT&T mobility versus FTC. And what the court found was since the Federal Trade Commission historically has not been allowed to go after what are called common carriers, and since the bribe-end industry is a common carriage industry that from this point forward the FTC doesn't have jurisdiction. And, you know, if I was, you know, I know for, you know, I know the cable industry and the telephone industry, when they saw this ruling, you know, you were talking about the huge sector of this country, a broad swath of the West Coast and Mountain West, they know they can get Congress to pass this law now that they will have no federal agency that has clear power to enforce the rules, to go after their privacy invasive practices that Jeremy talked about earlier. And, you know, they're counting on ignorance in Congress to not see that they are basically freeing them in a way that they've never been freed in the past. So we'll be left to our own devices. Like, there will be no cop on the beat to protect us from invasive ISP practices. I mean, it's going to be very difficult at the federal level. The states can be more active, but at the same time, this is how sophisticated the ISP industry is in lobbying. I mean, I've worked, I've had to fight these folks for a very long time for most of my career. And what they do, what they did at a number of states, including our own home state here in California, is gotten themselves deregulated out of public utility commissions and restricted the power of state attorney general to go after them with the argument that the federal government already regulates us. So therefore, why do we need regulation at the state level? We have too many regulations. We need to cut back on some. So there are parts of this country that there is no consumer protection agency that has clear power to police them. These are companies that, you know, I've lived in five places in the last six or seven years. Everywhere I went, I had only Comcast as my option as high-speed internet. You don't have a lot of choice in a lot of places. So we've got another question. Matthew asks, is there any wordage, if it passes, that it will allow them to give it, I presume our data, openly to law enforcement without a warrant? So if this repeal passes, can Verizon suck up my browsing history and then the local cops say, hey, what's Jeremy been browsing? And they're just like, sure, here. So wherever a warrant is required now, it will still be required. However, the challenge is it's a third-party doctrine and still pollutes kind of our privacy rights when it comes to law enforcement. Namely, when you share your data with a private company, the courts have taken a fairly lenient view of that you've lowered your reasonable expectations of privacy, which is kind of the legal term for when a warrant is required by the Fourth Amendment. The argument I have told a number of members of Congress is wherever the private industry goes in terms of aggregating, collecting, and amassing people's information, the government's not that far behind. This is going to be a moment when ISPs suddenly become, because again, just to remind people, ISPs don't do this as a general matter outside of really pushing the limits of the law that existed prior. They will not be allowed, if Congress did not pass this law, to collect your information in terms of where you browse what applications you use. Yeah, I think that's the big point, is that if this gets repealed, then ISPs will start collecting more information, and so there will be more for them to give the law enforcement with or without a warrant. Whereas if these rules stay on the books, there's no reason for your ISP to start recording your browsing history, because they can't start making money off of it without your permission. And so I think that's really where the key distinction is. The warrant requirement will be the same. It'll just be the data will happen to be recorded in a much easier place for law enforcement to go with or without a warrant. They'll essentially just be much more attractive to law enforcement. I mean, anyone that collects a lot of information becomes an attraction to law enforcement to take that information. And as we've advocated in recent months, delete your logs to the companies that do collect data because you can't surrender information to the government that you don't have in the first place. So Kathleen points out that this is really good information since there are a lot of users who know the plug-and-play functionality of computers who only know the plug-and-play functionality of computers in the internet. And many have no idea how search engines, website servers, and data actually intertwine in the process. And this is something that we have to fight every day at EFF because as Ernie alluded to, a lot of these senators don't understand how the internet works and so they're getting bamboozled, misled by lobbyists in Congress. And of course, the big ISPs have a lot more money for lobbying than the little guys like EFF. So we do what we can to get the information out there. And so that's why we've been sort of pushing out a lot of informative blog posts explaining that you may be tracked a lot online now, but you will be tracked everywhere. And so there's a big difference between being tracked some places and the company that you are paying, whatever, 30, 40, 50, 100 dollars a month, deciding to also track you so they can get a little money on the side selling your data, selling what you browse, what apps you use, what you're searching for, what websites you go to. It can be where you bank, what your political inclinations are. Think about when you look at a news website, they can know what sort of news websites you go to. Depending on whether the news websites using encryption, they can know exactly what you're reading to then try and target you with ads. And who knows beyond targeting of ads what they would do that information, right? These are profit-making entities that their job is to figure out how to maximize the value of the information they have in their hands. The law has prevented them from ever entering that market in the first place. And for some reason, like I said, Senator Flacon and the senators are pushing this repeal, feel that it's somehow unfair that you as a consumer who have no choice, when you use a communication provider, you have no choice but to tell them where you're going to go, right? You have no choice to tell them what website you're going to visit, no matter how sensitive that is to you, to you don't want the world to know, and that somehow it is unfair that the company you've already paid, you've already compensated through your subscription, doesn't have the power to double tip, right? To make it a little extra money on information that's not theirs, it's yours. So I'm guessing that we've got some more people joining us now who maybe didn't see it in the beginning. So just to reiterate, I'm Jeremy Galula. I'm a senior staff technologist at EFF. And Ernesto Falcone, I'm the legislative council at EFF. And so if you're just joining us and you've been hearing about all these terrible things that your ISP could do if these rules get repealed, I want to reiterate that we can stop this. We can keep Congress from pushing this through. We can kill it and protect our privacy protections. And so the way you do that is you call your senators, you call your representatives, go to act.eff.org, act.eff.org. And right there on the page, there is a link that you can click, you fill in your address, and it will automatically figure out who your representative, who your senators are, you call them. And in particular, we need to target Republican representatives, Republican senators, because it's become a partisan issue. I don't understand why. I don't think privacy should be a partisan issue, that's the way the votes are shaking out. And so if you care about this and you live in a red state, a purple state, you have a Republican senator representative, call them and let them know. And just, you know, I think if they hear from enough of their constituents that this is something that you care about, that we care about, I think we can stop it. I think we've got a good chance. Yeah, I really want to emphasize this. In a previous life, I actually worked in Congress, and I will say definitively when people speak out, when people organize, when people take the time to pick up the phone and make that phone call, it matters. I feel like I'm on an NPR pledge drive. Yeah, but it really matters. And I'll say this, I think because they're used to most people not taking the time to reach out, right? Because that's kind of the gauge that a lot of lawmakers think about the politics. They think, well, if no one cared enough and only they cared, then I can assume that either people just didn't care enough or they're supportive of where I was going. And, you know, for those of you that live in a state that has a senator that's pushing this, disabuse them of that notion. Yeah, definitely. Tell them that you care and that, you know, you're going to hold them responsible at the ballot box when it comes time to it. So Kathleen asks, is the repeal effort bipartisan? And we've sort of alluded to, explicitly or no, it is a Republican-led process for, again, I don't understand why it doesn't seem like it'd be a Republican issue. Maybe it's because that's just who the big ISP lobbies figured they could target and convince. I do know that one of the Republicans, the Marsha Blackburn, in the House, who's leading this on the House side, Marsha Blackburn from Tennessee, you know, companies like Verizon are definitely in her top 10 contributors campaigns. And so, there's that. As of right now, the only sponsors and cosponsors of the bills in the House and Senate are Republicans. We don't know if any Democrats will vote for it until they actually hold the votes very soon in the United States Senate. But it seems, at this moment, it seems likely it'll shake down to whether three Republican senators decide to vote no to kill it, presuming at this point that Democrats are as, kind of, has been the pattern right now in the United States Senate. I mean, certainly in the debates we've been watching, every debate, every, you know, senator who comes up to debate it, it's been a Democratic senator saying, no, this is a terrible thing. Do not repeal these rules. We need to keep them. And a Republican senator saying, no, it's going to kill innovation, which doesn't make any sense. Or that it's, you know, unfair to the broadband companies as if they need, you know, special help. I mean, one thing that the cable companies and telephone companies are very good at in D.C., having seen it personally as a staffer and having fought against it in consumer advocacy is they look at what the rhetoric is of the political party and then they try to contort what they want to change into that rhetoric, right? So they're going to make an argument that this is somehow a free market decision or this is somehow this pro-free market to get rid of, you know, people's privacy protections. I, you know, fundamentally disagree with the idea that if consumers themselves are not the ones to decide that they can share their information or not, right? I mean, if it's a compelling product. It should be your choice, yeah. I mean, if it's a compelling product that the ISP wants to offer you in exchange for your information, you have the power under the rules that they're trying to repeal to agree. And that seems exactly what a free market is about, right? On the other side, as a consumer, whether or not you're going to give that away, what they want, what the cable companies want to change it to is they take your information and then you really have no power to say no. Yeah, I mean, the only innovation it's going to kill is the innovation to use your data without your permission. So, Matthew asks, with this, will we be able to FOIA politicians browsing history? Unfortunately, I think the answer is no. This doesn't give the government anything and, of course, you can only FOIA things. And for those who don't know, FOIA is Freedom of Information Act. So this is how you get government records if they haven't been released. And so, sadly, no, this wouldn't help us in that department. Certainly, it would be interesting that ISPs might start collecting or would have, perhaps, politicians browsing history. And then, you know, if an ISP gets hacked, who knows what's going to leak? If I were a politician, I would be thinking about that and thinking, you know, maybe this isn't my best interest not to repeal these rules. But it's not going to affect FOIA in any way. Yeah, and I think that's kind of the tragedy in all this. As politicians have to kind of feel the personal ramifications of the terrible decision they're engaging in right now. And that shouldn't be the case. You should understand kind of the fundamentals of what we're talking about here. So we've got another question from Jose. Will EFF create TLS everywhere? So this is alluding to just to explain, because not everybody knows what TLS stands for. So to start, EFF has this browser plugin called HTTPS Everywhere which you install it and anytime a website supports an encrypted connection, you can use it. It automatically takes advantage of it. But not every website supports encryption. That's up to the website. There's lots to do, but not all do. So TLS is basically stands for Transport Layer Security. It's the acronym for encryption that websites use. So I guess what Jose is asking is will we make it so that all websites can be encrypted? And in some sense we've already done that. So we've partnered with Mozilla, with Akamai, with a few others to create a certificate authority called Let's Encrypt. So this is basically what it comes down to is anyone who runs a website can get the encryption up and running on their server for free, automatically with basically like you type in two things at the command line of your server. So in some sense we've done that. But of course what we can't do is force a website to use encryption. That comes back to the website. And certainly if every website was using encryption that would eliminate a lot of the snooping that an ISP could do. But to be clear it wouldn't eliminate all of it. So the ISP would still be able to tell which websites you're going to. They wouldn't be able to see what you're viewing on the website. But if you went to EFF.org or facebook.com they could see, oh Jeremy went to EFF.org. They just wouldn't be able to tell was I, you know, looking at the blog on EFF.org or renewing my membership or what. Well and sometimes just knowing the website itself where you're going. Oh that tells you plenty. You pretty much know most of what a person says. If I'm going to nytimes.com versus foxnews.com I think that tells you a little bit probably about a certain political inclination one way or another. If I'm going to my church website that probably tells you that, you know, or my synagogue, my mosque, you know. If you're looking up the nearest gun show if you're looking up where a Planned Parenthood is all of the kind of things that are political in nature when we engage in it this is now going to be cataloged in a way that has never happened before. Yeah and to be clear, you know, we're not saying that this stuff doesn't already happen to some extent. There's plenty of third-party tracking and EFF fights it. Like we do we do everything we can. It's more just like the power of our ability to actually help people in the first place. Yeah so we can help like individuals fight third-party tracking online. We can help you fight the tracking by the Googles and the Facebooks of the world. Once ISPs get the ability to jump in, we can't create a TLS everywhere. We've done what we can. We're going to continue pushing encryption. But ISPs are in a unique position of power and that's why we need these rules. You know, we won't stop even if we lose here. We're not going to stop but that's why we're worried I think is the biggest thing. We can't, I mean I've definitely seen people say, you know, if you're relying on rules in the government to protect you, forget it. And to some extent that's true. But there's only so much we can do from a technical perspective to protect you from your ISP. I mean we could try to get everyone to use Tor and VPNs. But that's a much harder lift than say, you know, install Privacy Badger as your browser extension. You know, it'll really be a shame if only the technically savvy get Privacy. Like that's what I don't want to happen. And I'm worried that's what will happen. Well, and also just kind of to connect to that while these companies push the limits of the law on a regular basis, they also take into the account liability. Right? They look at the law and they say, you know if we do this and we're caught we're going to owe a lot of money and it's going to be very damaging to our profits. So for the most part any responsible company just doesn't do it in the first place. There is a lot of power, you know, this is kind of like the corporate lawyers, you know, they look at the law and they look at the rules and they make, they give advice to the company where they can push the envelope. And the moment they're violating the law and they're caught, you know, by investigating work that we can do at EFF or journalists or other folks out there on the internet you know, there are penalties and ramifications that we can invoke to discipline that activity. But if they pass SJRES 34 the rule to pass the repeal of the FCC's broadband privacy rules they will have been given an extraordinary gift to be able to go to court and say, Congress has spoken the FCC cannot discipline our privacy invasive practices and we will fight that fight in court but we will be fighting it at a disadvantage. So can't the FCC just write new rules if these ones get overturned by Congress? Like can we just lobby the FCC again and maybe try to convince them to write new rules? So the fundamental issue here that I think the Senator Flake of Arizona who's the primary author of this bill has not given enough credit to is the damage he's doing with the Congressional Review Act as a process. Why is it damaging? So a Congressional Review Act if it's enacted in the law and it's a it's a very rare procedure. I mean it's almost never been successful for the 30 plus some years that it's existed it essentially allows a Senator to look at a regulation or rule that was enacted towards the end of the last administration bypass the Senate filibuster and utilize kind of what's called an expedited schedule makes it really fast. I mean we've been finding this fight for close to a month which is super fast for Congress. Wait so did Congress thoroughly debate this? I mean have there been hearings about this where they actually got testimony about the about the CRA about repealing the privacy rules? Way back in the day they there was probably a lot of debate. I mean this is an old rule and this is what we're talking about like the but about this particular but not about the CRA. I'm not asking about repealing the privacy rules. No. You said they're rushing it through so they haven't even heard that hearings or had testimony. Yeah and then I think that's the worst part about all this is there is this enormous rush. I mean we're talking about four weeks since introduction that they're going to try and make this law without any sort of consultation of legal experts who have all the information. I mean this may have extraordinary ramifications for consumer privacy. You know if you go to our blog you'll see the legal analysis I've written out kind of explaining when you pass a repeal under Congressional Review Act you are also telling the federal agency that they can't create rules that are quote-unquote substantially similar. What does that mean? Right does that mean that the FCC then in the future if they change their mind and Congress is like oh you know what we were wrong to repeal this FCC please update the rules. Will the FCC be unable to do that because the new rules will look substantially similar you know in terms of legal terms. And if they are they're prohibited. They're prohibited and so the FCC won't be able to write new rules. No I mean that's what it comes down to. Fundamentally and the big challenge for us is say the FCC in the future right this is like a common sense one. What if the next FCC says the ISP is not allowed to look at your browsing history which is essentially a piece of the current rules that exist now. The cable and telephone industry and their lawyers will go straight to court and they'll challenge the FCC and say Congress said that's a substantially similar rule to what we just repealed therefore the FCC can no longer do that. If you look at the privacy rules that exist that are taking effect now that were updated last year they encompass a lot of our activity that potentially Congress is now taking off the table. When you say our activity what do you mean? Just our activity online the things that we do. Browsing history app usage your MAC address IP addresses inserting tracking cookies into your traffic but also things that you would normally associate with just having an account like you know name billing address. Social security numbers I mean all that stuff is just going to lose its protection. Yeah I mean and that's that's it's one of those things where you know the FCC did the right thing you know once in a while the government actually does the right thing and this is one of those where they said all of these things that you do on the internet that are private in nature the cable company and telephone company have to have your permission. And I think to be clear you know EFF is often considered a pretty libertarian organization so it's kind of weird for us to be sitting in these chairs saying the government did the right thing especially because we sue the government a lot and and I think the the real kicker for us is if people had actual like compared options if there was competition in ISPs I don't think we'd be saying this I think we'd be saying let let the free market sort it out but the problem is there is no like it doesn't make sense to have 10 different cable companies dig 10 different trenches to lay 10 different cables to go to your house and that's part of why there isn't a lot of competition when it comes to broadband in this country you know the majority of Americans do not have multiple choices you have maybe cable maybe DSL and if you're and maybe and maybe wireless and I would argue wireless with the really restrictive data caps isn't even an option so you get maybe cable maybe DSL so that's two if you're really lucky and you live in a big city that's great that's wonderful like San Francisco is great we have actually like a privacy concerned ISP in San Francisco but my mom lives in you know the middle of nowhere in this country and she has one choice and that's it and if they decide they're going to start selling her data her options are live with it or don't have internet access which is not really a choice and that's why we think we need somebody and in this case it's the FCC to step in and preserve our privacy yeah I absolutely agree the enormous amount of concentration we have in high-speed broadband forces us to have to think about you know clear rules that govern their behavior because you know it's laughable in most parts of this country for someone to tell you well if you don't like your broadband provider just switch to another one if you've taken the time to research what your options are if you want anything above 25 megabits per second which nowadays barely cuts it for most of the kind of cutting edge stuff you and 51% or more of this country have only one choice they're effectively region monopolies you don't have cable companies competing with other cable companies in this country they all have their own cities their own territories so unfortunately we're going to have to wrap up soon so so we have one last quick question and then we're going to remind everyone go to act.eff.org because even if we don't stop this in the senate we can still kill this in the house the question is is there help on your website regarding VPNs for less savvy users so if you go to so we do not recommend specific VPNs that would take a lot of research we haven't had time to do but if you go to ssd.eff.org then then you can find information about you know how to use a VPN what it does for your traffic you probably have to look through the index to find it but ssd.eff.org so unfortunately I have a radio thing to go to so I'm going to have to take off right now I'll go ahead and wrap up and again act.eff.org yeah act.eff.org you know not only that it would be great if you're listening and as you hear this contact your senator and also contact your member of the house you have two senators one representative of the house in the house tell them where you stand on consumer privacy oh we got a colleague of mine joining us here tag team Dave you're in boom alright do it Dave how's it going I'm Dave Moss I am on EFF's activism team and if you joined early on it's my fault that we had some echo for the first couple of minutes I'm going to fill in for Jeremy for the last few minutes of this I know we just posted it again to Twitter and so I don't want to cut it off for people who just joined us but I'll sit here and look smart there you go there you go Dave is smart the the fundamental facts are if you take the time to contact your legislator your member of the house and your two senators that has an impact but don't even stop there get your friends to do it right if you and every single person can get two or three of their friends to take just the five minutes it takes to make that call it will make a difference party lines and the political parties and kind of the rhetoric that surrounds where democrats stand means nothing means nothing compared to the power of the voters voice it's just a fact from my experience having worked in DC for a long time that not enough people at times take the time to pick up that phone and tell them where they stand and I will tell you that the people who rely on your silence are in fact the special interest in this instance the cable and telephone companies are hoping you do not take the time to tell your legislator where you stand so Ernesto can you take us a little bit through the process you might have addressed this before but how thoroughly did congress debate this on this specific repeal not at all there's been no hearings consulting legal experts explaining the ramifications of what they're doing right now and we at EFF have had been working on this for about four weeks because that's about how long they've been since the introduction of this legislation and now already moving to the United States Senate for a vote to the floor that's an absurdly fast process for United States Senate and for congress generally to make law this is stuff we're going to have to live with for a very long time absent a new action by congress in the future and so I think not enough thought has been given to this by the proponents and the author about what we're talking about and we're effectively talking about potentially ending consumer privacy online so Senator Brian Schatz had a pretty good medium post about this issue this morning who are some of the senators who have been really good about defending privacy with this bill so the lead defenders I have to give out to Senator Edward Markey from Massachusetts he has been a very good friend and membership on all our issues on civil liberties and privacy generally and he's leading the charge in this space Senator Blumenthal from Connecticut Senator Schatz from Hawaii Senator Franken from Minnesota has always been a very in essence you can call him a privacy hawk as well has been very good on these issues and you know I think it's unfortunate but it has become a partisan issue because actually protecting people's privacy has regularly been a bipartisan issue at EFF we are able to work with both parties fairly effectively trying to protect people's ability to keep their personal information intact and to themselves I just think right now the cable and telephone industry have been successful in convincing the Republicans that this is somehow a free market change in law and not essentially a grab-back giveaway to them to reverse course on what has been about 20 years of consumer privacy law so I believe we have a call tool up at act.eff.org when people call their senators to talk about this how in depth should they go and explain it do they need to have you know be fully literate on every line of the legislation or you know is it a more simple sort of thing they need to tell you you can make it real simple and happy work there myself I could tell you as long as you say I you know you have to tell them where you are because they need to know if you're a voter and you tell them what you stand on one sentence I support my privacy online I oppose SJ Res 34 which is the bill they're debating right now I do not support repealing the FCC broadband privacy rules you can say any of one of those things and that is more than enough information for the folks who are recording that information to report to the senators where you stand and where their voters stand I mean it will take probably less than 5 minutes so let's do a quick demo real quick ring ring ring you're the staffer good morning senator flake's office hey senator flake my name is dave moss I live in phoenix Arizona I just want to tell you that I'm your constituent and I urge you to oppose the CRA resolution to kill the FCC's privacy rules okay I will record that can I get your address you know 1515 70th street 85254 okay great I will let the senator know and then that's pretty much the end of the conversation and that's all it is so I think we can go ahead and wrap it up there did you have any last thoughts I know the vote is happening pretty soon yeah we'll check our blog we'll report out how the vote goes if it does pass the united states senate and we don't know the outcome right now we know it's pretty close so every call matters every person you get to activate and speak to the legislature legislator right now is helpful depending on the outcome goes if it goes to the house then we need to campaign shifts to the house and we fight the next stage of the fight there and after the house it'll be up to the president if they pass it there as well alright well thank you for joining us today Ernesto and thanks to Jeremy who has gone off to talk to some radio and again with electronic frontier foundation you can take action right now www.cac.eff.org you'll see it's very top of the page there is the button to click that will walk you through the process of calling you're a member of congress anyways thanks for joining us today