Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/804369
ChipThompson, Editor How to have your say: Letters must be signed and provide the writer's home street address and home phone number. Anonymous letters, open letters to others, pen names and petition-style letters will not be allowed. Letters should be typed and no more than two double-spaced pages or 500words. When several letters address the same issue, a cross section will be published. Email: editor@ redbluffdailynews.com Fax: 530-527-9251 Mail to: Daily News 728Main St., Red Bluff, CA 96080 Facebook: Leave comments at FACEBOOK.COM/ RBDAILYNEWS Twitter: Follow and send tweets to @REDBLUFFNEWS Governmentsandlegislativebodiesoften do profoundly stupid things. But lately, it seems like we've been living through a veritable bumper crop of dumb. There's the multiple-car pileup that passes for our national debate on health- care reform. Or consider the badly penned Russian family novel that is the Trump ad- ministration. But in a lit- tle noticed vote this week, the U.S. Senate became the undisputed title-holders of dumb, undertaking an ac- tion so arrogant in its over- reach, so profoundly offen- sive in its intent, and so violative of fundamental pri- vacy rights that it's a wonder that enraged voters aren't marching on the Capitol, holding their iPhones aloft like torches. If you missed it, here's what happened: The Re- publican-controlled cham- ber gutted a key consumer protection and passed a bill that would allow your Inter- net-service provider to sell your browsing history to all comers. Without your permission. Let that one sink for a minute. Every step you take on the Web, from shopping at Ama- zon and browsing headlines at, say NewsMax or MSNBC or PennLive or some other outlet, or playing an online game or listening to music, would be scraped from your browser history, tied into a convenient bundle and sold off, all the better for incred- ibly annoying advertisers to sell you stuff. Without your say. If this goes all the way, and there's every indication right now that could happen, "that would be a crushing loss for online privacy," Kate Tummarello of the pro-on- line privacy Electronic Fron- tier Foundation wrote in a blog post. That's because "ISPs act as gatekeepers to the Internet, giving them incredible ac- cess to records of what you do online. They shouldn't be able to profit off of the in- formation about what you search for, read about, pur- chase, and more without your consent," she wrote. On the Senate floor, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, dem- onstrating a breathtaking lack of understanding of on- line issues, argued that the current rules "hurt job cre- ators and stifle economic growth," Ars Technica re- ported. He also made the laugh- able claim that the FCC regs forced the "government [to pick] winners and losers." I don't know if Cornyn has been to Philly recently, but those plucky Mom-and-Pops Verizon and Comcast aren't exactly struggling. And the government, I hate to tell him, picks win- ners and losers all the time. That only becomes incon- venient when multi-billion- dollar business interests are breathing down your neck. As The Verge reports, the rules were passed last year requiring ISPs (just like poor struggling job-creators Comcast and Verizon) to get customers' permission be- fore sharing personal infor- mation, like browsing his- tory. The ISPs, who see nothing but dollar signs in that trea- sure trove of data, have been pushing to have the rule administered by the Fed- eral Communications Com- mission repealed. They saw their moment with the as- cent of the even-more Re- publican Congress and the new Trump administration. And they ran with it. The bill now goes to the U.S. House, where all it will take is one more vote to wipe out that protection en- tirely. But, wait, you say: "I only visit sites like Su- preCutePuppies.com and Isn'tLifeGreat.org, what do I have to fear from this? It's only those who visit the darker, porn-y corners of web who should fear their browsing history being sold off to the highest bidder. And, anyway, there's no such thing as privacy on the In- ternet anymore." And you might have a point — about all of that. But keep in mind — a chamber whose member- ship's average age is the same as your Grandma who still sends you emails in CAPS-lock and forwards you cute cat photos, just took away any and all say you had over what happens to your browsing data. You want your data sold? That's your business. The rest of us would like the right to opt-out, thank you very much. And here's the added bo- nus: The legislation that cleared the Senate would also bar the FCC from im- posing a similar rule in the future when it will more than likely become clear that this is a disastrously stupid idea that only benefits those self-centered civet cats who want to profit off your data. So the FCC can't change its mind — even if it wants to. As The Verge reports, "Assuming these rules get overturned, the FCC is go- ing to have to formalize a new set of privacy require- ments for internet provid- ers. When that happens, it's likely they'll be quite sim- ilar to [the current] rules — banning ISPs from shar- ing information on children or their subscribers' health — but without the restric- tion on sharing general web browsing history." If only there was a way to hit ctrl-alt-del on Congress. An award-winning political journalist, John Micek is the Opinion Editor and Political Columnist for PennLive/The Patriot-News in Harrisburg, Pa. Readers may follow him on Twitter @ByJohnLMicek and e-mail him at jmicek@ pennlive.com. JohnMicek Congress hits ctrl-alt-del on your privacy Cartoonist's take It sure seemed to me that the news coverage quickly transi- tioned to the failure of Congres- sional Republicans to coalesce around and pass a substantial "re- peal and replace" bill for President Donald Trump to sign. I'll not con- sume this column or glaze readers' eyes with the "tall weeds" of health insurance minutia and Wash- ington insider, who-won, who- lost reviews. The relevant point is that the potential for Watergate-level scandal by Barack Obama's ap- paratchiks after the November election was obvious, was sup- portable and had to be glossed over by the partisan Democrats- with-bylines, the news media. Hence, with an assist from in- transigent ideologues (the Free- dom Caucus of conservative Re- publicans) killing the health care bill, the news caravan moved on from what Obama's people did, what Obama knew and why and how electronic surveillance of Trump's transi- tion members occurred. Perhaps you know, the avoid- ance strategy of news outlets aside, that it is a federal crime, punishable by fines and hard time in prison, to reveal Amer- ican names and the nature of conversations picked up by oth- erwise legal and legitimate sur- veillance of foreign targets. The foreign side is supposed to be targeted for the sake of Ameri- can national security, whether for the protection of state, de- fense or industrial secrets. Un- less a citizen is caught break- ing laws in the course of such communications—given that we are free to associate and talk to people of any country, declared military enemies excepted— business, industrial, cultural and even state and local gov- ernmental actors may pursue their interests in talking to for- eigners. Do the Dems agree? Only time and serious in- vestigation by proper commit- tees and agencies will deter- mine whether reportedly clear actions by outgoing Obama offi- cials, to illegally leak names of Trump's team that were "wire- tapped" between the election and inauguration, turn up cit- able crimes by the Obama ad- ministration. Democrats have presumed guilt, even treason- ous culpability, over as-yet-un- substantiated collaboration and collusion between Trump and the Russians. There isn't, hasn't been and never was any proof; I don't see any surfacing going for- ward. Democrats' presumptions and efforts have amounted to nothing more than shameful, shameless attempts to deny the clear, constitutional legitimacy of Donald Trump's election. Such an un-American strategy has been unheard of in our his- tory, which is a testament to the success of America's peace- ful transfer of governmental power between partisans. The only prior exception would, of course, be the last election of a Republican President, George W. Bush, wherein die hard left- ist Democrats likewise could not bring themselves to regard Bush's win as legitimate. James Rosen of Fox News, a one-time target of Obama's (meaning Obama's people) spy- ing, had this to say: "Repub- lican congressional investiga- tors expect a potential 'smok- ing gun' establishing that the Obama administration spied on the Trump transition team, and possibly the president-elect himself, will be produced to the House Intelligence Commit- tee this week, a source told Fox News…The intelligence corrob- orated information about sur- veillance of the Trump team that was known to Nunes (In- telligence Committee chair- man) even before President Trump accused" Obama of wiretapping him in tweets. Sources say that it "leaves no doubt the Obama administra- tion, in its closing days, was us- ing the cover of legitimate sur- veillance on foreign targets to spy on President-elect Trump… The key to that conclusion is the unmasking of selected U.S. persons whose names appeared in the intelligence, adding that the paper trail leaves no other plausible purpose for the un- masking other than to damage the incoming Trump admin- istration." Stay tuned; I see a massive scandal. We know without any doubt that a crime occurred in "un- masking" the name of Trump's Intelligence nominee, Michael Flynn, whose conversation with the Russian ambassador was proper, traditional for a transi- tion member, and yet got him removed for the oversight (or deception) of not telling Trump. That is irrefutable. A half dozen or more news outlets used leaked names to smear Trump and his people with baseless ac- cusations over Russia. I would direct those on the other side to recall the out- rage they trumped up over Pres. Bush's then-newly-en- acted practice of wiretapping phone calls between someone in America and a foreigner, over potential terrorism. It was a travesty, they said at the time, that an American, or anyone on our soil for that matter, should be routinely surveilled without a warrant for simply communi- cating with a foreigner. They effortlessly change stan- dards for outrage, no? "If a Bush-era intelligence agency had engaged in 'incidental col- lection' of Barack Obama's phone calls in 2008, and then disseminated that informa- tion, the Earth would have stopped in its orbit." David Har- sanyi wrote that in "Democrats Shouldn't Dismiss Nunes' Spy- ing Claims So Quickly—Liberals have been warning us for years about 'incidental collection.'" He cites many examples of lib- eral concern. In "What's really hidden deep within all this intel squab- bling," by widely respected An- drew Malcolm, he lays out the firm rules for protecting the privacy of Americans in inter- cepted calls, assigning numbers to the person involved. "We now know Obama administration intelligence operatives listened in on Trump aides' conversa- tions. We now know they ille- gally leaked the identities. And it's not a stretch…to wonder if those were incidental." Daniel Chaitin: "Bob Wood- ward warned on Wednes- day that there are people from the Obama administra- tion who could be facing crim- inal charges for unmasking the names of Trump transi- tion team members from sur- veillance of foreign officials." If true, Woodward said, "it is a gross violation." I see it as un- precedented sabotage and sub- version of American democracy. Don Polson has called Red Bluff home since 1988. He can be reached by e-mail at donplsn@ yahoo.com. The way I see it Unprecedented subversion of America The Republican- controlled chamber gutted a key consumer protection and passed a bill that would allow your Internet-service provider to sell your browsing history to all comers. Sounding off A look at what readers are saying in comments on our website and on social media. Officer will be ok and all the persons involved are accounted for. Chrystal Taylor Dellinger: On a shooting Friday near Cottonwood involving a CHP officer. They didn't come knocking on my door. I guess I'm good, lol. Greta Corbin: On federal immigration raids in Tehama County. JohnL. Micek Don Polson OPINION » redbluffdailynews.com Tuesday, March 28, 2017 » MORE AT FACEBOOK.COM/RBDAILYNEWS AND TWITTER.COM/REDBLUFFNEWS A6