By – Ruby Henley
Today, May 16, is a grave day in our battle for the Internet, as it is the last ditch effort to save Net Neutrality. The Senate will vote to reverse the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) net neutrality repeal. Odds are, with Republican opposition, Congress won’t do it, but it’s the last, best shot we have of restoring net neutrality this year.
The FCC published the final notice of the repeal in the Federal Register in February. Net neutrality is now scheduled to end on June 11.
By using the Congressional Review Act (CRA), Congress can overturn the FCC’s rulings by a simple majority vote. With 51 Senators voting against the FCC, net neutrality’s death sentence would likely be delayed.
“By passing my CRA resolution to put net neutrality back on the books, we can send a clear message to American families that we support them, not the special interest agenda of President Trump and his broadband baron allies,” said Democratic Senator Edward Markey in a statement.
I hate to say it, but right now I wish I were a Democrat. Nah, I guess I will just suffer as a Republican. However, I have to say I am very angry that the average American citizen is being ditched by Trump for Big Broadband! President Trump, I want an explanation. This is not putting freedom or money in my hands. I am not the swamp!
To restore it completely, the House would also have to vote in favor of net neutrality and that’s not likely. Even if the resolution makes it through the Senate it will still face Republican opposition in the House where Republicans hold a 236-193 majority.
Republicans tend to oppose net neutrality. They buy the big internet service providers’ (ISPs) argument that they must charge new and higher fees for their services to pay for upgrades and maintenance to their networks. So we might as well look to higher fees coming our way – Americans lose again.
I think we should prepare ourselves for upcoming cyber attacks. Here is an article on what occurred last year during the Net Neutrality battle which did not come out in the media.
www.zdnet.com/article/fcc-will-not-publish-evidence-of-alleged-ddos-attack/
- FCC won’t publish evidence of alleged DDoS attack, amid net neutrality battle.
- The agency has “gigabytes” of server logs that offer evidence for the alleged distributed denial-of-service attack, but it won’t make them public.
- By Zack Whittaker for Zero Day | May 21, 2017 — 01:30 GMT (18:30 PDT) | Topic: Security
- The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will not publish evidence of an alleged distributed denial-of-service attack, which critics say prevented a flood of people from leaving messages on the agency’s support of net neutrality.
- Call for the release of the agency’s log files came after security experts and pro-net neutrality groups disputed the agency’s claims that someone attempted to “bombard the FCC’s comment system with a high amount of traffic” in the hours after the John Oliver’s “Last Week Tonight” show, which rallied viewers to leave feedback in favor of net neutrality rules, which the FCC currently wants to roll back.
Now I am really fuming in finding this article –
www.zdnet.com/article/fcc-chairman-browsing-history-freedom-of-information/
- FCC chairman voted to sell your browsing history — so we asked to see his
- Thanks to the FCC chairman, internet providers can now sell Americans’ browsing histories for targeted advertising. We thought it was only fair to see his — so, we filed a Freedom of Information request.
- By Zack Whittaker for Zero Day | May 12, 2017 — 19:52 GMT (12:52 PDT) | Topic: Security
- The Federal Communications Commission has refused to turn over the internet browsing history of its chairman Ajit Pai, weeks after he rolled back rules that prevented internet providers from selling the browsing histories of millions of Americans.
- In a response to a request filed by ZDNet under the Freedom of Information Act, the agency said Friday that it had “no responsive documents” to our request. The agency cited a similar decision filed with Homeland Security that found that the law doesn’t require a government agency to create a record in response to a request.
Why are average American citizens like you and me being targeted? How can President Trump allow this to happen. This is not draining the swamp, as we are not the swamp! This is very upsetting to say the least!
Net neutrality is the idea that all traffic on the internet is treated equally. In 2015, under President Barack Obama, a Democrat-led FCC passed rules that barred broadband companies from slowing down or blocking access to certain websites or services. It also prohibited internet companies from charging a fee to access customers more quickly.
Supporters of net neutrality say the rules are necessary to ensure broadband companies don’t abuse their power as gatekeepers of the internet. Companies like Facebook, Google, and Twitter supported the rules. But broadband providers say the rules were too onerous and stifled investment. Broadband providers like AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon support the FCC’s repeal of the rules.
So basically it looks like it is big corporate interests against the interests of the individual Internet user like you and me. Needless to say we should be very upset!
You can watch the vote live here –
Senate Democrats Win Vote To Protect Net Neutrality