Chris Calabrese: GOP Congress and Trump Strip Americans of Internet Privacy Protections

Award-winning Investigative Journalist Robert Parry (1949-2018)

Award-winning investigative journalist and founder/editor of ConsortiumNews.com, Robert Parry has passed away. His ground-breaking work uncovering Reagan-era dirty wars in Central America and many other illegal and immoral policies conducted by successive administrations and U.S. intelligence agencies, stands as an inspiration to all in journalists working in the public interest.

Robert had been a regular guest on our Between The Lines and Counterpoint radio shows -- and many other progressive outlets across the U.S. over four decades.

His penetrating analysis of U.S. foreign policy and international conflicts will be sorely missed, and not easily replaced. His son Nat Parry writes a tribute to his father: Robert Parry’s Legacy and the Future of Consortiumnews.

Thank you for donating

If you've made a donation and wish to receive thank you gifts for your donation, be sure to send us your mailing address via our Contact form.

See our thank you gifts for your donation.

The Resistance Starts Now!

Between The Lines' coverage and resource compilation of the Resistance Movement

"The man who predicted Trump presidential win now says Trump impeachment could happen," AM Joy with Joy Reid, MSNBC, Jan. 21, 2018
"Sketchy Kazakh money finds its way into Trump dealings," The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC, Jan. 15, 2018
"Red flags seen in many Trump real estate deals," The Rachel Maddow Show, MSNBC, Jan. 15, 2018
"Secret Money: How Trump Made Millions Selling Condos To Unknown Buyers," BuzzFeed, Jan. 12, 2018
"The Scandals of Donald Trump: Presidential Edition," The Atlantic, May 15, 2017
"Here's what we know so far about Team Trump's ties to Russian interests," Washington Post's ongoing compilation
"What Comey Was Investigating, Explained," The Moscow Project, Center for American Progress

"Donald Trump's Financial Ties to Russian Oligarchs and Mobsters Detailed In Explosive New Documentary from the Netherlands," Dutch TV documentary, Alternet.org, May 12, 2017
Ongoing compilation of Trump's creeping authoritarianism," MotherJones.com
Full resource list ...

SPECIAL REPORT: "The Resistance - Women's March 2018 - Hartford, Connecticut" Jan. 20, 2018

Selected speeches from the Women's March in Hartford, Connecticut 2018, recorded and produced by Scott Harris

SPECIAL REPORT: "No Fracking Waste in CT!" Jan. 14, 2018

Jen Siskind Jennifer Siskind, local coordinator for Food and Water Watch, describes the campaign to stop fracking waste in Connecticut, which so far has led to fracking waste bans in 34 towns around the state. Interviewed by Richard Hill on Mic Check, WPKN Radio, Bridgeport, CT

SPECIAL REPORT: "Resistance Round Table: The Unraveling Continues..." Jan. 13, 2018

Lindsay Kanaly The panel discusses Trump's long history of racism and the Republican voter suppression juggernaut confronting Democrats leading up to the 2018 elections. Special guest: Lindsay Kanaly, a lead organizer of the Women's Marches planned for Jan. 20, 2018. Panel: Scott Harris, Ruthanne Baumgartner and Richard Hill on Resistance Roundtable, WPKN Radio, Bridgeport, CT.

SPECIAL REPORT: "Capitalism to the ash heap?" Richard Wolff, Jan. 2, 2018

Richard Wolff, Economics professor Richard Wolff declares U.S. capitalism to be beyond repair and suggests the need for a radical alternative. Interviewed by Richard Hill

SPECIAL REPORT: Maryn McKenna, author of "Big Chicken", Dec. 7, 2017

Maryn McKenna, investigative journalist and author of Big Chicken, talks about the widespread use and dangers of antibiotics in commercial poultry, beef and fruit production. Interview by Bill Duesing, Richard Hill and Guy Beardsly on WPKN's Organic Farm Stand.

SPECIAL REPORT: Nina Turner's address, Working Families Party Awards Banquet, Dec. 14, 2017

Nina Turner, president of Our Revolution, talks about the fight ahead for progressives as she receives the Working Families Organization Award for Exceptional Leadership Towards Advancing Progress. The event was held in Meriden, CT. Produced by Richard Hill.

SPECIAL REPORT: Mic Check, Dec. 12, 2017

Working Families Party of CT talks strategy and issues for 2018.
Lindsay Farrell, executive director of the Working Families Party of Connecticut, discusses the state's electoral landscape and lays out the issues and strategies that could lead to progressive victories in 2018. Interviewed by Richard Hill.

SPECIAL REPORT: Resistance Roundtable, Dec. 9, 2017

Disturbing developments in the Trump/Republican Agenda
Focus on the tax bill, destruction of our public lands, North Korea and Trump's private CIA. Panel: Scott Harris, Ruthanne Baumgartner and Richard Hill. Special guest: Jo Macallero of Rise and Resist.

SPECIAL REPORT: On Tyranny - one year later, Nov. 28, 2017

Professor Timothy Snyder, author of the highly acclaimed resistance manual On Tyranny, discusses his book and offers a fresh assessment of the state of our beleaguered republic. Timothy Snyder, history professor at Yale, is introduced by Stanley Heller, administrator of Promoting Enduring Peace, a Connecticut-based organization that sponsored this event at the United Church Parish House in New Haven on Nov. 28. A brief interview with Snyder conducted by WPKN radio producer, Richard Hill, follows his talk.

SPECIAL REPORT: Mic Check, Nov. 12, 2017

Lynne Ide, director of program and policy with the Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut, talks about the current state of health care coverage in Connecticut. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

SPECIAL REPORT: Resistance Roundtable, Nov. 11, 2017

Focus on the Republican tax plan, the just-released autopsy on the Democratic Party, and Internet censorship by Google, Facebook and Youtube. Including an interview with Hilary Grant, a lead organizer with Action Together Connecticut, who discusses the local results of the recent election, with hosts Richard Hill, Scott Harris and Ruth Baumgartner WPKN producers

SPECIAL REPORT: Rainy Day Radio, Nov. 7, 2017

Two leaders from Redneck Revolt, an anti-racist, anti-capitalist movement, talk about their work organizing with white working class people in Suffolk County, New York. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

SPECIAL REPORT: Rainy Day Radio, Nov. 7, 2017

Bruce Gagnon, coordinator for the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space, describes the extent of -- and motives underlying -- the vast US network of military bases around the globe. Interviewed by Richard Hill, WPKN radio producer

SPECIAL REPORT: Resisting U.S. JeJu Island military base in South Korea, Oct. 24, 2017

Joyakol, South Korean peace activist and singer, discusses the crisis on the Korean peninsula and focuses on the resistance to the U.S. huge military base being constructed on Jeju Island. The event was sponsored by the Greater New Haven Peace Council and this audio was recorded by Richard Hill, WPKN producer.
Joyakol discusses Americans' biggest misconceptions about the conflict between North and South Korea and the U.S., Interview by Richard Hill, WPKN producer.

SPECIAL REPORT: John Allen, Out in New Haven

John Allen, founding director of the New Haven Pride Center, Connecticut, talks about his new LGBTQ television show, Out in New Haven, which presents a range of political and cultural issues to the community. Interviewed by Richard Hill on WPKN's Rainy Day Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2018.

2017 Gandhi Peace Awards

Promoting Enduring Peace presented its Gandhi Peace Award jointly to renowned consumer advocate Ralph Nader and BDS founder Omar Barghouti on April 23, 2017.

Subscribe to our Weekly Summary & receive our FREE Resist Trump window cling

(Car window cling)

Email us with your mailing address at contact@btlonline.org to receive our "Resist Trump/Resist Hate" car window cling!

THANK YOU TO EVERYONE...

who helped make our 25th anniversary with Jeremy Scahill a success!

For those who missed the event, or were there and really wanted to fully absorb its import, here it is in video

Jeremy Scahill keynote speech, part 1 from PROUDEYEMEDIA on Vimeo.

Jeremy Scahill keynote speech, part 2 from PROUDEYEMEDIA on Vimeo.

Between The Lines on Stitcher

Between The Lines Presentation at the Left Forum 2016

"How Do We Build A Mass Movement to Reverse Runaway Inequality?" with Les Leopold, author of "Runaway Inequality: An Activist's Guide to Economic Justice,"May 22, 2016, John Jay College of Criminal Justice, The City University of New York, 860 11th Ave. (Between 58th and 59th), New York City. Between The Lines' Scott Harris and Richard Hill moderated this workshop. Listen to the audio/slideshows and more from this workshop.

Listen to audio of the plenary sessions from the weekend.

JEREMY SCAHILL: Oscar-nominated documentary filmmaker "Dirty Wars"

Listen to the full interview (30:33) with Jeremy Scahill, an award-winning investigative journalist with the Nation Magazine, correspondent for Democracy Now! and author of the bestselling book, "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army," about America's outsourcing of its military. In an exclusive interview with Counterpoint's Scott Harris on Sept. 16, 2013, Scahill talks about his latest book, "Dirty Wars, The World is a Battlefield," also made into a documentary film under the same title, and was nominated Dec. 5, 2013 for an Academy Award in the Best Documentary Feature category.

Listen to Scott Harris Live on WPKN Radio

Between The Lines' Executive Producer Scott Harris hosts a live, weekly talk show, Counterpoint, from which some of Between The Lines' interviews are excerpted. Listen every Monday evening from 8 to 10 p.m. EDT at www.WPKN.org (Follows the 5-7 minute White Rose Calendar.)

Counterpoint in its entirety is archived after midnight ET Monday nights, and is available for at least a year following broadcast in WPKN Radio's Archives.

You can also listen to full unedited interview segments from Counterpoint, which are generally available some time the day following broadcast.

Subscribe to Counterpoint bulletins via our subscriptions page.

BTL Blog

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

Special Programming

[an error occurred while processing this directive]

Progressive Resources

A compilation of activist and news sites with a progressive point of view

Share this content:

|

Subscribe to BTL

Podcasts: direct or via iTunes

Subscribe to Program Summaries, Interview Transcripts or Counterpoint via email or RSS feed

If you have other questions regarding subscriptions, feeds or podcasts/mp3s go to our Audio Help page.

Between The Lines Blog

Stay connected to BTL

Learn how to support our efforts!

Tweets by @BTLRadioNews

GOP Congress and Trump Strip Americans of Internet Privacy Protections

Posted April 5, 2017

Interview with Chris Calabrese, vice president for Policy at the Center for Democracy and Technology, conducted by Scott Harris

Under the rarely used Congressional Review Act, which allows Congress and the president to repeal recently passed federal regulations, on April 3, President Trump signed legislation revoking Internet privacy rules approved last year by the Federal Communications Commission. Those rules, passed under the Obama-appointed FCC chairman Tom Wheeler, would have implemented broadband privacy protections preventing Internet service providers from selling consumer’s personal data without first obtaining an individual’s authorization. The reversal of the earlier FCC rules means that Internet service providers can sell their customer’s browsing history to advertisers, in addition to geolocation, financial, healthcare and children's information.

While giant telecommunication and cable companies like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast argued that the FCC rules did not apply to Internet companies, ISPs have the capacity to gather far more personal data than companies like Google and Facebook. According to a recent YouGov survey published before president Trump signed the bill stripping Internet privacy, nearly 75 percent of both Republicans and Democrats opposed the repeal of the regulations.

Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Chris Calabrese, vice president for Policy at the Center for Democracy and Technology, who talks about his group's response to the recent Republican-controlled Congress and Trump administration's action stripping Americans of Internet privacy protections. [Rush transcript]

CHRIS CALABRESE: One of the first things to understand is this is a tremendous amount of information because the ISPs provide you with the Internet service, they literally see everything that goes over the wires to and from your Internet connection. Doesn't mean they see everything at all; a lot of times if you visit a website that says "https" –it has the little lock symbol in the corner – that's an encrypted website. So the ISP would know that you went to that website but not necessarily what you did.

But nonetheless, they have a lot of information if you go to a website about cancer research; if you go to a website about a particular hobby or interest – they're going to know that. They're also going to know a lot of information that they gather from your mobile phone, because these rules also apply to mobile technology. So the locations, the places you visit. If you're in the doctor's office. If you're in a church. If you're in a gun club. Any of those things would be information that the ISPs would be able to collect and store.

And then, under these rules, they can largely do what they want with this information. They are, in a very limited way, bound by the promises they've already made to safeguard that information. So, if they say they're not going to do something with it, you can still have an action, for example, a state attorney general saying, you said one thing and you're going to do another here. But there's very limited controls. It's not like under the regulations that were done away with, where a consumer could say, "No, I don't want you to share this" and "I don't want you to save it." And then, they use this information in a wide variety of ways, both to serve you ads, but also to create profiles about individuals and what they're interested in, and their habits and hobbies. And this can really end up being, affecting consumers in a lot of ways that I think are very surprising to them.

Just to give you one example, and this was something I think was very striking to people. Last year, we saw an anti-choice group, a pro-life group essentially target abortion clinics and so that people that went into those clinics would see pro-life ads, and only people who went into those clinics. And that's currently legal. Now that's the kind of thing that people don't like. They don't like the idea that someone knows that they're in an abortion clinic. And it's the kind of reason why we need these types of baseline rules so people can say, "I don't want to share that information. I don't want that out there about me." And that's the kind of rules we need for ISPs and honestly for a lot of the people who collect information on us, not just Verizon and Comcast, but bigger players like Google and Facebook. We all need baseline rules to protect our personal information.

BETWEEN THE LINES: Chris, how are groups like yours, The Center for Democracy and Technology, how are you planning to challenge this move to repeal the privacy protections for consumers? What options are there available?

CHRIS CALABRESE: Well, I have to be really honest. It's not a great time. You know, the rules themselves have now been rolled back. They've done away with these rules. What's worse is even a future FCC will not be able to bring these rules back, because of the way the Congressional Review Act works. So, what I think we need to do now is take a step back, and we need to think about what we want the world – this 21st century society where we're collective information on all of us all the time, from our phones, and our websurfing habits and the devices we may have in our house, our smart TV – and we need to sort of say, we're starting to reach a tipping point. So are we going to push for rules control that information? Is that going to be something that matters to us? And if it does, we need to tell our elected officials that. When we go to town halls, we need to talk about privacy and the need to control personal information – not just against the government, but also when it comes to commercial information. And we have to really make it a political movement in a political moment. And it's going to take some time, obviously. We're a long way from even the next elections. But it's time now for us to say that we care about our privacy and we care about how this information is being used. And we don't need to do away with it. We at CDT, at the Center for Democracy and Technology, love technology. We love new gadgets, we love to be able to use them in ways that help people. But we need baseline controls so that we can trust that this information is not being misused.

For more information about the Center for Democracy and Technology, visit cdt.org.