[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 163 (2017), Part 4]
[Senate]
[Pages 4609-4615]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




  PROVIDING FOR CONGRESSIONAL DISAPPROVAL OF A RULE SUBMITTED BY THE 
              FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION--Continued


                         Order for Adjournment

  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, if there is no further business to come 
before the Senate, I ask unanimous consent that it stand adjourned 
under the previous order, following the remarks of Senators Schatz and 
Markey.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
  The Senator from Hawaii.
  Mr. SCHATZ. Thank you, Mr. President.
  It is really a simple proposition and it is a scary one. As soon as 
this legislation is enacted, internet service providers can collect 
your browsing data and sell it without your permission. Right now there 
is a lot of conversation about who has jurisdiction, the FTC or the 
FCC, and who is more appropriate to govern internet privacy, whether 
this should be public sector or private sector, but the basic question 
is this for the pending legislation, Should ISPs, your internet service 
provider, be allowed to collect your browsing data without your 
permission and sell it? I think the answer for 98 percent of the public 
is a resounding no.

[[Page 4610]]

  Right now there is a single Federal agency that has the authority to 
protect consumers and their privacy when it comes to data collected by 
ISPs, and that is the FCC, the Federal Communications Commission, but 
the Republicans are proposing that the Congress strip the FCC's ability 
to protect your privacy, and when they succeed, the American people 
will lose the very few Federal protections they have when it comes to 
online privacy.
  Think about how much of your life is on line today--banking, health, 
your interactions with your kids, your kids' interactions with other 
kids. It is incredibly personal, and it is not just confidential 
information in a traditional sense or in a legal sense, it is really a 
complete picture of everything you are. That is why this is worth 
fighting about. It is worth protecting. That is why the FCC made these 
rules--to recognize that we live so much of our lives online and that 
in a lot of instances we don't really feel like we have a choice about 
whether we are going to engage in a contract to get broadband service. 
That is a necessity for many of us. Consumers deserve some basic 
protections, not only do the Republicans want to get rid of the FCC 
rule that basically says an ISP cannot collect your data and sell it 
for commercial purposes, but they want to do it in a way that will 
ensure that no Federal agency, not a single one, will have jurisdiction 
over privacy for consumers using broadband. They are trying to take the 
referee off the playing field and for good.
  The problem is very simple. There are actually two agencies that 
could have jurisdiction over privacy online, but there was a Ninth 
Circuit Court decision that made a ruling that removes the jurisdiction 
of the Federal Trade Commission over online privacy in the broadband 
space. So of the two agencies, the FTC and FCC, the FTC, according to 
this Federal court, no longer has jurisdiction. Now it is on the FCC's 
side of the house, but if we repeal the FCC rule, the way the 
Congressional Review Act runs is that it will prevent us from ever 
addressing something ``substantially similar'' again. This isn't about 
agreeing or disagreeing with this rule. This isn't about whether you 
think the FCC or FTC ought to appropriately deal with this. This isn't 
a question about whether you think we should exercise our prerogatives 
in the public or private sectors. This is about whether you think 
nobody should have jurisdiction over your privacy online.
  So what is the solution here?
  Well, we should work with private sector leaders, the FCC, and the 
FTC to find a comprehensive approach to privacy online. That is what 
this legislative body should be doing. Instead of aggressively digging 
into this issue on behalf of consumers, we are actually blowing up the 
only thing we have, which is this FCC rule. To repeat, by using the 
Congressional Review Act, Republicans are forever preventing the FCC 
from protecting your privacy if you use broadband.
  I want to end by noting that 55 years ago this month, President 
Kennedy gave a seminal speech about consumer rights. He spoke about the 
march of technology, how it had outpaced old laws and regulations, and 
how fast that progress had occurred. He noted that in just a few 
decades supermarkets went from carrying 1,500 products to more than 
6,000, doctors wrote 90 percent of their prescriptions for drugs that 
no one had even heard of 20 years before, but let's fast forward to the 
present day, and we have blown those numbers out of the water. The 
average supermarket carries 40,000 products; in 2015 alone, the FDA 
approved 51 new drugs; and of course we now have the internet, which in 
the United States grew from 148 million users to nearly 240 million in 
just 15 years. The next nonincremental change in technology in our 
lives will be the internet of things, in which we will have tens of 
billions of devices connected to each other and interacting with us 
whether we like it or not. So the march of technology goes on, but what 
stays the same is the bedrock principle that President Kennedy 
outlined; that consumers have the right to be safe, they have the right 
to be informed, they have the right to choose, and they have the right 
to be heard. Those rights are in jeopardy. The FCC took a small but 
important step, and now the Republicans are blowing that up.
  Let me be clear. This is the single biggest step backward for online 
privacy in many years, and we have failed the American people when it 
comes to their privacy. We should be staring this problem in the face, 
but what we are doing tonight and tomorrow is making it worse. That is 
why I will vote no, and I will urge my colleagues to vote no on this 
resolution.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Mr. MARKEY. Thank you, Mr. President.
  We have a historic debate going on here in Congress. Yes, there is a 
lot of discussion about the Russians cracking into our elections using 
electronic technologies. We have a President of the United States who 
is contending that his predecessor in the White House wiretapped his 
apartment in the Trump Tower. We have stories about the compromise of 
websites all across America--this company, that company, millions of 
healthcare records, people's privacy compromised, front page, above the 
fold. This is huge. What is going on in our country when this new 
technology allows for such an invasion into the privacy of the 
President of the United States, of citizens all across our country?
  These hearings are going on right now in rooms all across Capitol 
Hill. Everyone is concerned. Everyone is cross-examining witnesses, 
saying: How can this happen in our country? And then they are told: Oh, 
it is this new electronic technology which is out there. It allows for 
the ability to be able to crack into the privacy of Presidents and 
ordinary citizens. It makes it possible to make television sets that 
are purchased and then can be turned, from a remote distance, into a 
monitoring device just looking at you in your living room. How can this 
happen? What are the rules? Is there going to be any protection for the 
American people? So night after night, story after story, look at the 
compromise of the privacy, the security in our country, but out here on 
the Senate floor tonight we have the Republican response. The 
Republicans are saying to the American consuming public: You have no 
privacy. If you are at home, if you have Comcast or Verizon, if you 
have AT&T, and they are gathering all this information about you as 
your broadband provider, every site you go to, everything you are 
doing, everything your children are doing, what they are saying as of 
tonight, no privacy, no privacy if you have bandwidth. Everything is 
out there to be captured by these big broadband barons, and then they 
can sell it. They can sell it.
  What is the Republicans' answer?
  They say: Well, the internet thrives because of a light touch--a 
light touch. No, ladies and gentlemen, that is not what created what we 
have here today. We had to pass new regulations in 1996. I know, I was 
there. I was the Democrat on the committee in the House. There was no 
broadband--not one home in America had broadband in 1996. Can I say 
that again? Not one home in America in 1996 had broadband.
  Today, for a 12-year-old, a 50-inch screen plugged into broadband, 
that is a constitutional right. It didn't exist in 1996 anywhere. Was 
it because it hadn't been invented, that people hadn't thought through 
broadband, they hadn't thought through what was possible? No. It was 
because these companies decided, because they were pretty much all 
monopolies, that they weren't going to deploy it. So we had to change 
the rules in order to unleash this revolution.
  Now they are saying: Yes, but a light touch says no privacy 
protections. That would be bad. People don't really want privacy 
protections. That is not how I remember it when I was growing up.
  When I was growing up, when the salesman knocked on the front door, 
you know what my mother would say? Don't answer the front door. We 
don't want the salesman in our living room. That is what my mom said. 
Now, is it different today? Is everyone saying:

[[Page 4611]]

Yes, come on in. Come into the kitchen. Come into the living room. Come 
into the bedroom. Come look at the kids who are sick. Come look at 
Grandma who is sick. We want you to see our house. We want you to know 
everything about us, Mr. Salesman.
  Now the broadband provider knocks on the front door. The broadband 
provider says: I want to provide this great new service with a light 
touch. Let us go into the key rooms into your house--in your living 
room, in your bedroom--let us put in this broadband technology, but we 
are also going to gather all this information about every member of 
your family--your mother, your father, your children--and we are just 
going to gather it all, and then we are going to sell it to anybody we 
feel like selling it to.
  Let me ask you this. Have the values of the American people changed 
in one generation or are they the same? Do people want total strangers 
to know everything about you, and you have no right to say no? None? 
Because that is what this debate is about tonight, ladies and 
gentlemen. It is all about whether the Republicans are going to take 
away the rights of people to protect their children, to protect their 
families from having all of this information which the broadband 
providers encourage people to put online to be then sold as a product. 
Did you go to a healthcare website to find out something about a 
disease a child in your family has? Well, that is now a product to be 
sold. There are plenty of insurance companies that would love to know 
all the people who have gone to that website to find out about that 
disease. Do you really want that? That is what this debate is all 
about. How much privacy are people entitled to in this country?
  Are we going to give it to the broadband companies to determine that? 
That is what we are voting for tonight. They are saying: We need 
harmonization, meaning we need a standard which is voluntary--
voluntary. The broadband companies decide what the level of privacy is. 
You subscribe to that company. You now have that level of privacy 
protection. What does that mean? That means if they don't want to 
provide any privacy protection, that is the standard. They are saying: 
Well, that law could then be enforced because they promised you no 
privacy. Now, if they violate that policy in any way, we could go after 
them. That really is what the Republican Party thinks about the 
private, most intimate information that ordinary families put online 
because there is only one company that knows everything, and that is 
the broadband provider, that is Verizon, Comcast, AT&T. Every other one 
of the thousands of websites, they know what is on their websites. They 
don't know what is on the other websites. Only one company, your 
broadband provider, knows everything--has all of your information. Now 
what is the standard? What is the standard? The Republicans say: No 
standard. Don't worry about it.
  Yes, the Federal Communications Commission put a new rule on the 
books. Yes, the Federal Communications Commission says that if they 
want to gather this information about your children, they have to get 
your permission in order to sell that information to somebody else. 
That is the rule right now. They gather information about your 
children. They have it. If they want to sell it, they have to get your 
permission. You have to check a box. Yes, take all of the information 
on my child's computer, and sell it. Sell it to people out there who 
want to know about my child.
  That is the rule today. What they will say, as we vote tomorrow at 
noontime, is no more permission from the parents--none, zero, zilch.
  You are on your own, kids.
  Sorry, parents. The Republican Senate decided you don't keep those 
protections. Why? Because it is a light touch. People really do not 
care about privacy in the modern era. It is kind of like--privacy? Get 
over it. You don't have any. Get over it. Get over it, say the 
Republicans. You don't have any privacy.
  Now we are going to hear them shedding crocodile tears about all of 
the electronic hacking that goes on in the United States. But do you 
know that all of that combined is not even a thimble compared to the 
compromise of the privacy of 320 million Americans that is going to be 
possible after this rule is repealed tomorrow? It is the rule that 
gives American families the right to say: No, I don't want you 
gathering that information about my children. No, I don't want you to 
sell information about my children. That is gone. That is the vote the 
Republicans will cast tomorrow. The die is cast. They are all going to 
do it.
  It is unbelievable to me that, in one generation, we have gone from 
people not letting the salesman into the living room to allowing one 
company to come in and gather every bit of information about every 
member of the family who is online all day long. It is amazing to me.
  Do you want to know what I believe? I believe I have the same values 
that my grandmother had. I believe I have the same values as my mother 
had. I don't want anyone coming into my living room. My mother didn't 
want anyone coming into the living room. My grandmother didn't want 
anyone coming into the living room, and I am sure my great-grandmother 
in Ireland didn't want anyone coming into the living room to whom they 
did not give permission to come into the living room, especially when 
the kids were at home, but that is not the Republican view. The 
Republican view is: Oh, the big broadband barons don't like it? That is 
great. That is fine.
  What is next? Think about it. They can get the information about when 
all of your family members are online, where they went, who they were 
talking to, who they emailed. All of it is available to the broadband 
company. It is just a product to be sold to the highest bidder.
  Who wants this information out there? You can make billions of 
dollars by selling this information to other companies that would love 
to data mine your family so that they can profile your kids, profile 
grandma--profile anybody in your family--just so they can start to send 
in information and try to sell you stuff.
  Do we really want people to be able to sell this as a product? The 
privacy of America is for sale. Is that what we have reached--that we 
are monetizing privacy?
  We are saying: Hey, we are just getting in the way of the 
entrepreneurial spirit of America. Do you know what? For our whole 
history, we have gotten in the way of the entrepreneurial spirit of 
America. The salesman knocks on the door, and you tell the salesman: Go 
away. You are not getting into our living room, Mr. Entrepreneur. We 
don't want you in our living room.
  So there are two sides to this. Yes, you want the entrepreneurial 
spirit to thrive, but, simultaneously, you should have a right to say: 
No, Mr. Entrepreneur. I don't want your product. I don't want you in my 
living room. I don't want you to have access to all of the information 
of my children. Sorry, Mr. Entrepreneur. I am sure you could have made 
a fortune, but the fortune comes at too high of a price.
  Ultimately, the founding principles of our society are that, yes, we 
are capitalists, but we are capitalists with a conscience. We 
understand that there should be limits to how far you can go in making 
a buck. There should be a limitation.
  What the Grand Old Party wants to do is to roll back the broadband 
privacy rules that give you an ability, if you want, to say yes. You 
can just click and say yes to all of these companies. Take all of my 
information. Take all of grandma's information. Take all of the kids' 
information. You can just check that and say yes. That is in the law. 
Do you want to give up all of your privacy? Push ``yes.'' Yet, under 
the existing law, you can also push ``no.'' I don't want to give up my 
privacy. It should be the consumer's choice. It shouldn't be Big 
Congress's and Big Government's.
  Big Government is now deciding you have no privacy. The government is 
moving in. Replacing Big Mother and Big Father is Big Government. Big 
Government is siding with Big Business and Big Broadband. That is what 
is happening here today, and it is leaving behind Big Mother and Big 
Father,

[[Page 4612]]

who care about their kids. They are taking away the authority that 
parents have had since the beginning of time up until now.
  The broadband revolution now makes it possible to monetize privacy--
to make money, to give entrepreneurs a chance through light touch 
regulation--which will create more jobs out there. Jobs for whom? Jobs 
for people who are learning about your kids, jobs for people who are 
learning about how to make money off of your kids, jobs for people who 
do not care about your kids. They care only about making a few more 
bucks.
  How hard is this? Which business school do you have to go to to have 
a 3-by-5 card to figure this out? It is pretty simple, huh?
  What is the job of the Senate? The job of the Senate is to ensure 
that we animate these technologies with human values, that we say to 
the inventor, to the entrepreneur: Oh, I love that whole idea of an 
automobile; that is fantastic. But do you know what? Why don't you 
build in some brakes? We are going to put up speed limits. We are going 
to have seatbelts. We are not going to allow you just to put it out on 
the road and just endanger the public or the passengers. We are going 
to have some rules.
  It is great. Yes, invent that new medicine, but we are also going to 
say to you: Hey, do you know what? We are going to have a child's 
safety cap on top of that medicine so a kid cannot get access to it.
  We balance it. We animate each new technology with the values that 
our parents had and that our grandparents brought from the old country. 
It does not change. It is always the same. The polling is 80 percent--
Democrat, Republican, Independent, every ethnic group, every income 
group.
  Do you know who does not like the rules? Entrepreneurs--entrepreneurs 
who want to monetize your privacy.
  But it is always going to be at 80 percent, because what is, really, 
the differentiating issue? Why would a Republican mother want her kids 
to have their privacy compromised? You know that she does not. You know 
she does not. She doesn't even know that this debate is going on. She 
doesn't even know that, after they repeal this rule, it will be the 
Wild West.
  So there are real rules. Again, it is the most important set of rules 
because it is the broadband provider. They get every bit of 
information. This is not just: Oh, I subscribed to this newspaper, and 
I am reading this newspaper. Oh, I am at Google. Oh, I am over here at 
ESPN sports. Oh, oh, oh. There are hundreds of thousands of websites, 
and that website knows only about what you did on that website. No, 
that is not what the broadband company knows. They know everything. 
They know everywhere you went. That is why they want this repealed. 
Just think of how valuable that is. Just think of how much money they 
can make by selling all of that information about you and your family.
  That is what we are debating tonight. We are debating a fundamental 
change in our country. Is it a heavy touch as opposed to a light touch 
to say that people's privacy--that the security of their families--
should be protected? Then let's just shut down these hearings we are 
having and all of the crocodile tears being shed about what is 
happening in our society.
  How can all of this happen?
  We go into top secret briefings. We get told: Oh, they tapped into 
this. They cracked into that. People--Senators--sit there, and they 
``tsk, tsk'' as to how terrible it is. Then, simultaneously, up here on 
the Senate floor, they say: Oh, by the way, we are just going to take 
away the right of a mother and father to say, ``No, you cannot crack 
into the information that our family is putting online.'' Oh, sure. You 
don't want to get into the way of an entrepreneur who can figure out 
how to make money off of that. Why would we care about that?
  The absurdity of it all--the total absurdity of it all--is that all 
of these people who are ``entrepreneurs'' can get fabulously rich 
without compromising children's privacy, grandma's privacy.
  For somebody in the family who has a disease and just wants to go to 
that website and find out about that disease all by himself and who 
does not want anybody else in the family to know, why can't he do that 
without wondering whether everyone else who went that website is now 
going to have that information sold? The phone company or the cable 
company will say: Oh, great. Let's go find the insurance company that 
is in this region that would want to know that that person might have 
that disease. You might not want to give him insurance, especially 
after the Affordable Care Act is repealed by the Republicans.
  Who cares about that, right? You have no privacy. Get over it, say 
the Republicans. Get over it.
  Just think if we applied that to phone calls. What if people said the 
phone company should be able to sell the number of the person and the 
name of the person whom you called? How would you feel about that? 
Would you like that to be a product? You called this person at this 
time for a half an hour. Then you called that person back again another 
half an hour later. Then you called him again at night. Would you like 
people to know that--just as a product--and get the name, the number, 
the time, and how long the call lasted? We have laws against that.
  Would you like people to know which channels you are switching to? 
Say you have a satellite dish and are switching from channel to 
channel, and at 11 o'clock at night, you are just going to stop on this 
channel. They know which channel you stopped on.
  I passed a law back in 1999 that prohibits that information of which 
channel you stop on from ever being made public. You cannot sell that 
information. I am proud of that. Whose business is that? But it is 
there. They have it. They have that information.
  Now we have reached a broadband revolution. Oh, isn't this great? 
Isn't this a fantastic revolution? Didn't it occur because there was a 
light touch? No, there was not a light touch. You see, we deregulated 
the telephone industry and the cable industry so that we could have the 
broadband revolution beginning in 1996.
  But here is the paradox of deregulation. The paradox of deregulation 
is that you need more regulations in order to make sure that the 
competing companies can gain access to the capital markets to raise the 
money so as to finally put pressure on the telephone and cable 
companies to deploy broadband. That is the paradox of deregulation. You 
need more, so you open it up to more competitors who then wind up 
forcing these companies to finally deploy broadband even though they 
had it decades beforehand. Interesting, isn't it? It is the paradox of 
deregulation. You need more.
  Even as we did that, we knew that we were going to need privacy laws 
because this aggregation of information is something that goes right to 
the heart of this kind of tension that exists in a capitalist society.
  Some people say: No rules. You are interfering with my ability to 
make money.
  That is what the car company said about airbags, and that is what the 
car company said about seatbelts: Do not mandate to have us put it in 
as it is going to undermine our product.
  But, over time, mothers and fathers finally said: No, no, no. You 
cannot do that. I don't want the kids in the front seat with no 
seatbelts. I don't want people in our family in the backseat with no 
seatbelts.
  The same thing is true with safety device after safety device. So 
privacy plays that role when we are talking about information.
  Now, if the first step is broadband, no privacy, then, logically, 
they should support the whole idea that if you are on your iPhone and 
you have called 50 people today, it is a product. So all of those 
people you called should be information the telephone company can sell. 
What would the argument be from the other side? The other side would 
say, that is a light touch. That is a light touch. It is going to make 
it possible for the phone company to make more money. And believe me, 
they would make a lot of money if they could sell the information about 
who every American called all day long.

[[Page 4613]]

  Well, they don't want to touch that because phones are still kind of 
sensitive. They don't want to go there. But broadband, that is 
different. Websites, that is different. For some reason, that is 
different because what you are doing on the website, what you are doing 
with your email in the modern era is what you do on your phone every 
day, right? It is what you do on your phone. So the goal has to be that 
we have the accountability for the Republicans as we do this, this 
evening.
  President Trump is constantly railing about the fake violations of 
his privacy--totally fake violations of his privacy. You would think 
that a crime had been committed, but there wasn't. It never happened. 
But the way he yells about it, it is almost un-American for anyone to 
compromise the privacy of him or anybody else. But these are going to 
be very real compromises of the privacy of ordinary people in our 
country.
  So I am just going to give to my colleagues the little Constitution 
that is now on the books to provide protections for all Americans. It 
is very simple. It requires the broadband company to, No. 1, get 
consumer consent before using or sharing subscribers' personal 
information--get your consent--No. 2, promote transparency by saying to 
the broadband company that they have to tell each consumer that they 
are actually collecting this information about them. They have to 
constantly be telling you that. No. 3 is to ensure that the broadband 
companies adopt data security protections and notify consumers if a 
breach occurs; that is, if all of this information is now wide open for 
God knows who--some hacker who has gained information--they have to put 
in the toughest possible security. Then, if it does get compromised, 
they have to tell the consumers immediately. They can't delay a month 
because it might be bad PR, 2 months because they are afraid it is 
going to affect their bottom line. They have to let people know that 
their personal information has been compromised.
  So that is it. That is what is bugging them. That is what is bugging 
the Republicans. They want to make sure you don't keep these 
protections.
  So what does that mean? Well, after we vote tomorrow, after the 
Republicans take these rules, these protections off the books, after 
the internet service providers, or the ISPs, get what they want, ISP 
will no longer stand for ``internet service provider.'' It is going to 
stand for ``information sold for profit.'' It is going to stand for 
``invading subscriber privacy.'' That is what ISP will stand for after 
tomorrow at noontime, high noon--the end of privacy online, except for 
a light touch where it is voluntary. And we know these broadband 
companies are definitely voluntarily going to give the highest possible 
protections to American families. We know that. Because if they wanted 
the highest possible protections, they have them right now. They want 
them off the books so they don't have to do anything. It will be 
voluntary.
  So these broadband behemoths want to take control away from the 
subscribers and relentlessly collect and sell your sensitive 
information without permission. It could be about your health, about 
your finances, about your children. It can track your location, draw a 
map of where you shop, where you work, where you eat, where your 
children go to school, and then sell that information to data brokers.
  That is going to be an incredibly profitable industry that the 
Republicans are opening up this week. Right now, they are drafting up 
their business plans, just a 3-by-5 card all across the country. They 
have already basically decided that the Republicans are going to have 
these votes; so let's get on with these new rules.
  The broadband industry says that they are an unnecessary burden, but, 
in fact, this whole area is one that actually goes to the heart of who 
we are as Americans. I think that whether you are a very conservative 
person or a very liberal person, there should be a small core number of 
American values that brings us together, and I would put privacy in 
that group. We can fight over the Affordable Care Act. We can fight 
over how many new nuclear weapons we need. We can fight over gay 
marriage. We can fight over many, many issues--some of them religious, 
some of them just strategic in terms of what is best for our country 
moving forward--but how can we fight over your family's privacy? I 
don't understand the ideological differentiation that is artificially 
being created by the broadband companies' insisting that the 
Republicans repeal those privacy laws because all of this is now going 
to be done without your consent, without your permission.
  If they wanted to document now how many times you search online for 
heart disease, breast cancer, opioid addiction treatments, and then 
sell that information to an insurance company, they are going to be 
able to do that. You are giving them permission just by subscribing. 
And you know what they say: Oh, the marketplace will work; you can just 
go to the other broadband providers in town. Oh, there is no other 
broadband provider in town? You are in rural America? Oh, sorry, you 
have to use our company. Oh, there are no rules if you want to use our 
company--no rules.
  They will say: Well, let the marketplace sort it out. What 
marketplace? Maximum, in most places, there are two companies you can 
have broadband service from, and they are both going to say privacy 
protection is voluntary. So there is no privacy. It is all going to 
happen without your consent, and they will just say: Oh, it is just so 
we can harmonize the rules. Yes, they are going to harmonize the rules. 
They are going to harmonize them so it is very efficient. You have the 
same nonexistent voluntary guidelines that the broadband companies are 
going to put on the books.
  So you should want to choose, yourself, what information Verizon--if 
it discloses information about your family--gets to disclose. You 
should decide that, not Verizon. You should decide that. What they 
really want is to allow AT&T to choose whether it protects consumers' 
sensitive information from breaches and unauthorized use, and guess 
what the broadband barons' choice is going to be? They are going to 
choose to pocket their profits and throw your privacy out the door.
  Republicans want to sideline the Federal Communications Commission--
our broadband privacy cop on the beat--and create an unregulated Wild 
West where internet providers can do whatever they want with your 
private information. They want to allow broadband companies to write 
their own privacy rules. That is like asking a burglar to program your 
security system. It makes no sense. Oh, come on in, Mr. Burglar, 
program my security system, and then you can do whatever you want in my 
living room when I am gone on vacation this weekend. Just take anything 
you want--any of my private information, any of my private furniture, 
anything you like in the house.
  So we know the broadband industry--your wireless, your cable, your 
telecommunications provider. They can't self-regulate themselves. These 
same companies struggle to show up on time to install or to fix your 
service. You might have to wait all day to have the cable guy come and 
fix your cable system. They give you a range that goes like this: Well, 
we will be there between 9 in the morning and 5 in the afternoon; 
right? And now they are saying: You can trust us. We are going to 
protect your privacy. You know we are the cable company. You know we 
are the broadband company. You can trust us.
  Do we really trust the broadband industry to determine what privacy 
protections they give to their customers? Strong broadband privacy 
rules mean that we don't have to do anything. That is their definition. 
Let's be clear. The big broadband barons want to monetize this. The 
subscribers have already given them money. It costs a lot of money to 
subscribe to broadband service so the kids can have a 50-inch screen 
that is plugged in to be able to see all of these things that are on 
the incredible multidimensional, multifunctional screens. We are 
already paying a fortune for it. But they say that is not enough. That 
is not enough. We

[[Page 4614]]

need, say the broadband companies, to ensure that we can also make more 
money, and then taking all that information by invading your privacy 
and selling it. Broadband providers want to do more than simply provide 
Americans access to the internet. They want to sell that privacy 
information to the highest bidder.
  This brings us to the great divide between ISPs and those who wish to 
protect the free and the open internet. The 21st century broadband 
internet is not a luxury. It is an essential telecommunications 
service, just like telephone service. Just as telephone companies 
cannot sell information about Americans' phone calls, an internet 
service provider should not be allowed to sell sensitive consumer 
information without affirmative consent of that family.
  In fact, by putting the broadband privacy rules on the books, the FCC 
did harmonize privacy protections. They harmonized broadband privacy 
protections with the privacy framework that has prevented telephone 
companies from mining and selling information about our phone 
conversations for decades. Yes, that is what they did at the FCC. They 
said: the same protections for broadband information as we have for 
phone company information when you are dialing the numbers of people 
all day long. That is how they harmonized it. They said that in the 
21st century, broadband is the essential service that the phone was in 
the 20th century, and the information on both should be given the same 
level of protection. That is harmonization. That is a reflection of the 
revolution that took place in telecommunications in the 1996 
Telecommunications Act. That is what they are trying to take off the 
books--the harmonization of the standards that go back to grandma and 
grandpa. They made sure in 1934, when the Communications Act was 
written, that those protections were there. But, somehow or other, in 
2017, it is no longer important that people don't know whom you called, 
that people don't know whom you are online interacting with.
  So why did they do it? Well, they did it because broadband and 
telephone services are essential telecommunications services that 
Americans rely upon to thrive in the modern economy. The Federal 
Communications Commission, last year, under Barack Obama, just made 
sure that you got the same privacy protections. Broadband and telephone 
companies should not be allowed to exploit their privileged positions 
as telecom gatekeepers to use, to share, to sell sensitive information 
about Americans' online activities or phone calls. Yet, here we are, 
chipping away fundamental broadband privacy protections from the 
American public.
  Now, all of this begs the question: What other privacy protections 
are the Republicans now going to put on the chopping block? Do they now 
oppose the FCC's rules preventing telephone companies from collecting, 
using, and selling sensitive information about Americans' phone calls? 
They certainly oppose the FCC's rules for preventing broadband 
companies from partaking in similar interests and practices.
  Now, the broadband industry will tell us that these rules are unfair 
because they are different from the privacy rules for websites--Google, 
Facebook. Why should there be different rules? Well, every person out 
there knows what the difference between Google and the broadband 
provider is. Google is one app; it is not thousands of apps. So the 
whole argument is fallacious from the get-go. When you use Google, you 
understand what your relationship is with Google. When you use 
ESPN.com, you know what the relationship is with ESPN.com. But when you 
are using every service, now you are talking about the broadband 
companies. They are the only ones that know everything about you, what 
you are doing online, all day long, every single day. That is under the 
jurisdiction of the Federal Communications Commission, following along 
their supervision of the telephone industry, which they have had rules 
on the books to ensure that information can't be sold without your 
permission.
  Why is this so important? It is important because in the 21st 
century, having broadband service is like having oxygen in your lungs. 
Everyone uses it. Everyone is using it all day long. Everyone's 
information is in the hands of these companies. People might as well 
stop breathing as to disconnect from their broadband provider. That is 
why we need strong rules--not self-regulation--to prevent the internet 
service providers from mining and selling our data without consent.
  This is, for me, a historic fight to defend America's fundamental 
right to privacy. The broadband industry will say that if we don't take 
these rules off the books, subscribers will be confused. There will be 
one set of standards for the individual website and another set of 
standards for the entire broadband internet service provider industry. 
Frankly, consumers are only more confused about why we aren't doing 
more to tackle these important privacy issues. Consumers are confused 
about why we are spending time on the Senate floor taking away privacy 
protections. Consumers are confused about why we would allow broadband 
companies to sell their sensitive information to banks, to insurance 
companies, to advertisers, to anyone else willing to pay top dollar for 
your personal information without your consent. They are confused about 
why we would rescind the rules ensuring broadband providers adhere to 
the best data security practices protecting subscribers' sensitive 
information from breaches and unauthorized use, when we know there are 
unauthorized hacks every single day. We are in a historic fight to 
defend America's fundamental right to privacy online, a fight to allow 
consumers, innovators, entrepreneurs, the millions of Americans all 
across this country who rely upon the internet to control their own 
information.
  Instead of protecting our healthcare, instead of protecting our 
environment and protecting our privacy, Republicans want to give it all 
away to their friends and allies and big corporations. Those 
corporations don't care about consumer rights. They have one concern, 
and one concern only, and that is their bottom line. That is making 
money.
  The cornerstone of our country is capitalism with a conscience--with 
a conscience. Massachusetts' unemployment rate is 3.2 percent. We are 
proud of that. We are a capitalist State. Massachusetts is proud to 
have one of the lowest unemployment rates in our country. We believe in 
capitalism, but we also believe we can have capitalism with a 
conscience. In this instance, it means the protection of the privacy of 
people online, from having that family's sacred, secret information 
compromised for a profit, with no ability--no ability, no right, none--
for a family to say no. Take the broadband service or leave it. If you 
take it, you have no privacy.
  The only people in this country who can protect those families are 
100 Senators who will be voting tomorrow. I ask the Republican 
Senators, why would they strip this privacy protection from ordinary 
families? Why would they deny the right? All I can say is, overnight, 
all we can really say is we tried. We really tried to protect the 
privacy of Americans. That vote tomorrow will represent that showdown 
moment.
  If we lose, please, out of good conscience, Republicans, just stop 
all this public concern about the compromise, the privacy, the 
President, the national security apparatus in our country. Believe me, 
the ordinary American is going to be made far more vulnerable tomorrow 
than anything any Russian entity is ever going to do. It is going to be 
what we did to ourselves, what we allowed to happen to our own citizens 
at the hands of their own United States Senate that is going to be a 
far greater threat to every ordinary family in our country.
  I urge a ``no'' vote from my fellow colleagues on the Senate floor 
tomorrow. This goes right to the heart of whether we understand 
technology, we understand the responsibility we have for the American 
people, to protect them from the worst aspects of it.
  There is a Dickensian quality to the internet: It is the best of 
technologies,

[[Page 4615]]

and it is the worst of technologies, simultaneously. This technology 
can enable. It can ennoble. We want that to be extracted from the 
internet. But it can also degrade. It can also debase. It is the job of 
the U.S. Senate to protect the American people from that aspect of the 
internet. Tomorrow, if the Republicans have their way, they will remove 
the protections of the privacy of Americans and allow for an expansion 
of the degrading and the debasing of the privacy that ordinary 
Americans are entitled to in our country.
  I thank the Presiding Officer for giving me the opportunity to be 
here.
  Mr. President, I yield the floor.

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