Thanks to Trump and FCC: Internet and Student Privacy Gone, Schools and Library discounts disappearing!!!

Net neutrality is going away, along with your privacy, and it's going to cost Americans billions.

Remember when Republicans has a fit over collecting anonymous student data from our public schools? It was an invasion of our kids privacy.

Well, they have just reversed course on that, and targeted their own rural conservative areas for big program cuts that will cost their voters so much more. 

The following actions by Trump and the now conservative “free market” FCC will result in the loss of internet privacy, especially for our kids, and cost taxpayer billions. EDWEEK:

1. On February 3, FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai reversed an earlier FCC decision to approve nine companies as eligible broadband providers under the federal Lifeline program, which provides low-income consumers with a monthly subsidy of $9.25 to help offset the cost of phone or internet service.

2. A week later, Pai quashed an internal report documenting the success of the multibillion dollar E-rate program (which) provides discounts on certain services and products that are essential for classrooms and libraries to receive Internet connections (discounts depend on the level of poverty and location). Discounts range from 20% to 90% of the cost of eligible services.

3. In late March, Pai announced that the FCC would relinquish responsibility for designating eligible Lifeline providers to states.

As you can see, the costs for schools and libraries could suddenly skyrocket if the E-rate program is no longer supported, just so internet providers can rake in huge profits. Thank-you free market Republicans. 

And since this is insider stuff, American won’t directly see how the FCC’s irresponsible moves today will hike costs. Republican lawmakers will then use that to turn taxpayers against those costly government libraries and schools. Hey, it’s worked so far.

But giving up privacy was another profit driven move by Trump and the FCC:

On April 3, Trump signed a law overturning internet privacy protections. The former FCC chairman Tom Wheeler said: 

“Every student ought to be worried about that. And every school ought to be worried about that. Because suddenly, all of the information that goes across the network is available to be sold.

Let's go back. So the first thing [the new administration did] was come in and pull back on the E-rate report. The second thing was make it harder [for companies to get designated as a Lifeline provider.] The third thing was gut the privacy protections. The fourth thing is the Trump administration proposes a budget that cuts back heavily on education. And we're supposed to sit here and think that this is a benign environment? 

The most important part of the Open Internet Rule was that we put a referee on the field. Because who knows how the internet is going to evolve? You need to have somebody there to throw a flag and say, "No, that's not just and reasonable."

I think the people who don't support Lifeline in the first place, or don't support E-rate in the first place, always go and hide behind the ‘waste, fraud and abuse’ smokescreen. I wish they had an agenda in which they were looking forward and saying, ‘Here's some of the new opportunities and new challenges of the new connected society.’ Instead, they seem to be looking backwards and saying, ‘How do we undo everything we voted against when were in the minority?’"

Republicans give up their Voters privacy, offer up your Surfing to Businesses that are always getting Hacked!!!

Where are conservative radio fear mongers now? Am I dreaming or are these typically paranoid small government "leave me alone" voters okay with having their internet surfing stolen and spread out to businesses that are always getting hacked? 

Heck, thanks to Republican sellouts and Trump, anyone can get your information now for a few bucks, all your information open for the hackers.

Maybe the Republican and Democratic Party can get this public information and target you everywhere you go, or threaten you from running for office or voting differently with incriminating information.

The House on Tuesday voted in favor of blocking internet privacy rules passed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) last year, sending the bill to President Trump, who is expected to sign it into law.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said, “Your broadband provider knows deeply personal information about you and your family – where you are, what you want to know, every site you visit, and more. They can even track you when you’re surfing in a private browsing mode. You deserve to be able to insist that those intimate details be kept private and secure.”

Republican voters are good with this? Really?

ACLU legislative counsel Neema Singh Giuliani said, “It is extremely disappointing that Congress is sacrificing the privacy rights of Americans in the interest of protecting the profits of major internet companies including Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon.

In a major down-the-rabbit-hole twist on logic, defending "economic growth" known as profits....

“Today’s action is another step to remove unnecessary rules and regulations that handicap economic growth and innovation, and moves the country one step closer to ensuring that consumers’ private information is protected uniformly across the entire internet ecosystem," countered Jonathan Spalter, CEO of USTelecom.

But Pelosi countered with this...

“Americans learned last week that agents of Russian intelligence hacked into e-mail accounts to obtain secrets on American companies, government officials and more,” Pelosi wrote in letters to 11 companies.

“This resolution would not only end the requirement you take reasonable measures to protect consumers’ sensitive information, but prevents the FCC from enacting a similar requirement and leaves no other agency capable of protecting consumers.”

State Supreme Court dismantles Constitutional Right to Privacy, allows illegal search without warrant.

It appears “freedom and liberty” is just another slogan used by conservatives to get people to buy their loyalty and vote. What follows is breathtakingly outrageous, and supported by Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen. When it comes to child porn and sex, conservatives have their principles. 

I had to dig this page 5 story up, printed in the Wisconsin State Journal and not featured online, at Green Bay’s Fox 11 site. Talk about buried.

“Conservative activist” would be a mild way to describe this court, after overturning an appeals court decision that said the search of a man’s computer was illegal without a warrant.

Dismantling the Constitution by a Thousand Cuts: The court loosened up the requirement to get a warrant, by simply allowing a person’s suspicions to be enough to conduct a search. Case closed.

Here’s the jaw dropping short summary:

AP: The search of a man’s computer without a warrant that turned up child pornography was not a violation of his constitutional protection against illegal searches and seizures, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Friday. The court reinstated four convictions ... against Jeremiah Purtell, overturning a state appeals court that had determined the search was illegal. Purtell was on probation … complained to his probation officer about not being allowed to have computers, and admitted to her that he maintained a Myspace account. The probation officer looked at his account and saw images of a half-woman, half-cow that concerned her. She seized his computer in 2007 and found images of bestiality. She then turned the computer over to investigators who obtained a warrant to do a more thorough search, which turned up large volumes of child pornography. Purtell was sentenced to 12 years in prison.

Very Conservative Justice: Despite Purtell’s appeals court win, the conservative activists hate child porn as much as Purtell's Constitutionally protected right of privacy:

But the Supreme Court, in a 5-2 decision, disagreed. A probation agent’s search of a computer is allowed if the agent has “reasonable grounds” to believe there may be contraband, which she did in this case, Justice Michael Gableman wrote for the majority.

Purtell’s attorney, assistant state public defender Eileen Hirsch, said the decision raises questions about whether such searches will be more broadly permissible. “It creates more ambiguity in the law,” Hirsch said.

Ya think? The Outrageous Liberal Justices Opinion: The porn loving liberal justices would let this disgusting guy walk:

Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson and Justice Ann Walsh Bradley dissented, saying the search of his computer without a warrant violated his privacy rights under the U.S. Constitution.

Our "Impartial Partisan" AG: Supposedly always there to defend the constitution, J.B. Van Hollen instead went with his “principles” on this one:

State Department of Justice spokeswoman Dana Brueck said DOJ was pleased with the decision, which “reinforced principles of law that will allow state probation and parole agents to effectively supervise offenders in the community.”

So what about the rule of law, our Constitution...reminds me of Capt. Barbossa's response in Pirates of the Caribbean. The Constitution is just like the Pirates Code...

Fair Trial? Not when it supposedly involves Sex: It’s the return of kangaroo court justice:

The court in a 4-3 decision reinstated a conviction against James R. Hunt for causing his adopted 12-year-old daughter to view on his cellphone a video of a couple having sex. The court determined that Hunt, 43, received a fair trial, even though testimony from a friend backing up his defense was wrongly excluded. The Supreme Court reversed an appeals court ruling, which overturned his conviction, and ordered a new trial.

Even violent conservative Justice Prosser didn't agree with this one.

Three justices – Abrahamson, Bradley and David Prosser – dissented, saying exclusion of the testimony was not harmless because it bolstered Hunt’s defense that the girl had seen a different image of a testicular hernia sent to him by his friend and embellished her story.

Authoritarians Stick Together: Van Hollen okay with excluding testimony:

The DOJ was pleased with the ruling.

Oops! Scalia offers up the right to privacy regarding Gay Marriage and procreation.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought conservatives didn't believe the Constitution had a broad guarantee of privacy.

Yet in this comment made yesterday by Justice Scalia on his question: 

"I guess we could have a questionnaire at the marriage desk, when people come in to get the marriage, you know, are you fertile or are you not fertile..." 

he offers what appears to be a off-the-cuff broad reading of the right to privacy :

Opponents of Roe v Wade feel privacy rights should not have been extended to protect a woman’s choice to have an abortion because of the their First Amendment rights. They feel like their religion should be extended, in violation the First Amendment rights of other people’s religious beliefs, to apply to everyone else.

Here’s a great look at what the Constitution does say about privacy:   

umkc: The Burger Court extended the right of privacy to include a woman's right to have an abortion in Roe v Wade (1972), but thereafter resisted several invitations to expand the right.  The choice of a woman to have an abortion was found in Roe v Wade to be the sort of fundamental personal decision deserving privacy protection under the Fourteenth Amendment's liberty clause (Liberty Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment: No State shall... deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law).

In what respects is abortion a private matter, and in what respects might it not be?  If you don't believe that the Constitution protects the decision to have an abortion, do you believe that it would prevent the government from forcing a woman to have an abortion and, if it would, what is the constitutional basis for that protection?

The future of privacy protection remains an open question.  Justices Scalia  and Thomas, for example, are not inclined to protect privacy beyond those cases raising claims based on specific Bill of Rights guarantees.  The public, however, wants a Constitution that fills privacy gaps and prevents an overreaching Congress from telling the American people who they must marry, how many children they can have, or when they must go to bed.  The best bet is that the Court will continue to recognize protection for a general right of privacy. 

I thought this statement kind of summarizes my own feelings about our right:

The most frequently quoted statement by a Supreme Court justice on the subject of privacy comes in Justice Brandeis's dissent in Olmstead v. U. S. (1928): "The makers of our Constitution understood the need to secure conditions favorable to the pursuit of happiness, and the protections guaranteed by this are much broader in scope, and include the right to life and an inviolate personality -- the right to be left alone -- the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men. The principle underlying the Fourth and Fifth Amendments is protection against invasions of the sanctities of a man's home and privacies of life. This is a recognition of the significance of man's spiritual nature, his feelings, and his intellect."