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For Immediate Release
March, 23 2017, 02:45pm EDT
Contact:
Evan Greer, 978-852-6457, press@fightforthefuture.org
BREAKING: Senate Votes to Gut Broadband Privacy Rules
Statement from digital rights group Fight for the Future on Senate use of Congressional Review Act to sell Internet users’ personal information to the highest bidder
WASHINGTON
Today, the U.S. Senate voted to use the Congressional Review Act to gut the FCC's broadband privacy rules that prevent Internet Service Providers like COmcast and Verizon from selling their customer's personal information to advertisers without permission. Fight for the Future, a leading digital rights group that played an instrumental role in securing the FCC rules last year, issued the following statement, which can be attributed to campaign director, Evan Greer (pronouns: she/her):
"Today, 50 members of the U.S. Senate voted to sell their constituents most personal information to the highest bidder.
They used a blatantly undemocratic Congressional procedure to gut basic protections that prevent Internet Service Providers like Comcast and Verizon from selling their customers personal information to marketers without their permission.
These lawmakers -- many of whom accept large campaign contributions from the industry groups who lobbied for this move -- should be ashamed that they allowed partisan politics and corporate corruption to strip Internet users of our right to use the web safely and privately.
The controversial measure passed by a narrow margin. This is evidence that many members of Congress are still scared of angering the Internet. And they should be. Internet users are increasingly aware of how legislation and FCC rules impact our basic rights, and we are prepared to fight to defend them.
The Senators who voted today to sell out their constituents privacy will soon learn that the money they get from Cable companies can't buy back our trust."
By using the CRA to gut the FCC broadband privacy rules, Senators voted to allow ISPs to:
- Monitor and sell all your location data, search history, app usage, and browsing habits to advertisers without your permission
- Hijack your search results, redirecting your traffic to paying third parties
- Insert ads into web pages that would otherwise not have them
Fight for the Future was instrumental in the massive grassroots campaign that successfully pushed the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to enact the strongest net neutrality protections in US. history last year. They built the page BattleForTheNet.com, which was responsible for more than 1/4 of all the net neutrality comments received by the FCC during its feedback process, and were behind the Internet Slowdown protest, which was supported by more than 40,000 websites including some of the largest on the Web like Kickstarter, Etsy, Netflix, and Tumblr.
The group also helped take the fight for net neutrality into the streets with creative protest campaigns like Occupy the FCC and the nationwide Internet Emergency protests.
Fight for the Future is best known for their role in the massive online protests against SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, and continues to organize many of the largest protests in the history of the Internet. Over the summer, they organized the high profile Rock Against the TPP tour featuring many celebrities and well known musicians. Learn more at FightFortheFuture.org
Fight for the Future is a group of artists, engineers, activists, and technologists who have been behind the largest online protests in human history, channeling Internet outrage into political power to win public interest victories previously thought to be impossible. We fight for a future where technology liberates -- not oppresses -- us.
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Iran Confirms at Least 60 University Students and 10 Professors Killed by US-Israel Bombings
"The enemy does not want us to succeed or have development and progress, but all our universities are united now by these attacks," said the president of Tehran's prestigious Sharif University of Technology.
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At least 60 students and 10 professors have been killed in US-Israeli attacks on universities, according to an Iranian government official, while other university officials report even higher death tolls.
Standing outside the bombed-out ruins of Iran's Aerospace Research Institute, which was targeted twice earlier this month, Minister of Science, Research, and Technology, Hossein Simaei, said on Wednesday that attacks on the facility and other universities were “scientific crimes."
“This was a center where researchers worked on civilian sectors, including biology, agriculture, and surveying,” Simaei said. “Unfortunately, it has fallen victim to the enemy’s brutal attacks.”
The institute was one of at least 32 universities and 857 schools that have been attacked by US and Israeli forces since the US and Israel launched the war at the end of February, according to a report by the Iranian Red Crescent on April 10.
Bijan Ranjbar, the president of the Islamic Azad University system—one of the largest in the world—has confirmed that at least 110 students at his institution have been killed and 21 university branches have been damaged.
On April 6, the Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, which has been described as the "MIT of Iran," was also bombed, severely damaging its High-Performance Computing Center, which serves more than 3,000 artificial intelligence and computer science researchers.
The Pasteur Institute, one of the oldest research and health institutes in Iran, was also hit earlier this month, rendering it "unable to continue delivering health services," according to the World Health Organization.
"The enemy does not want us to succeed or have development and progress, but all our universities are united now by these attacks," said Sharif University president Masoud Tajrishi.
Israel has justified attacking these institutions on the grounds that they are closely linked to the Iranian military, similar to its claim that universities in Gaza are used by Hamas.
But following promises by US President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to bomb Iran "back to the Stone Ages," attacks on civilian infrastructure have gone far beyond those with any discernible military purpose.
The WHO reported on April 8 that since the beginning of the war, at least 23 healthcare institutions were attacked by US and Israeli forces. Attacks have also been reported on several oil and energy facilities.
Though the US and Israel often frame these attacks as inseparable from their objective of weakening Iran militarily, Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi, an assistant professor of the international relations of the Middle East at the University of St. Andrews, argues that they function as attacks on the whole of Iranian society.
"Whatever role the state played in constructing refineries, pharmaceutical plants, and research institutions, it is Iranian workers, engineers, scientists, and patients who depend on them, who built their careers inside them, and who will suffer most from their destruction," he wrote in Jacobin earlier this week. "Bombing a country’s industrial and scientific base is an act of violence against its people, regardless of what one thinks of its government."
He said: “The systematic killing of scientists and engineers, the destruction of centrifuges and computer networks, the bombing of research universities and pharmaceutical facilities: All of it reflects a coherent strategic objective, which is to erase the embodied knowledge, the accumulated expertise, and the institutional memory that make Iranian technological development possible.”
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An analysis published by The Guardian on Wednesday estimated that the 100 biggest oil and gas companies have collectively raked in an extra $30 million per hour since Trump launched his war with Iran without any congressional authorization in late February.
In just the first month of the conflict, The Guardian reported, Big Oil made $23 billion in windfall profits, and the industry is projected to haul in an additional $234 billion in windfall profits by the end of the year if the price of oil stays in the $100 range.
The top beneficiaries of the Iran conflict are Saudi Aramco, which is projected to earn $25.5 billion in windfall profits by the end of the year; Kuwait Petroleum Corp., which is projected to earn $12.1 billion; and ExxonMobil, which is projected to earn $11 billion.
"The excess profits come from the pockets of ordinary people as they pay high prices to fill up their vehicles and power their homes, as well as from businesses incurring higher energy bills," The Guardian noted. "Dozens of countries have cut fuel taxes to help struggling consumers, meaning those nations, including Australia, South Africa, Italy, Brazil and Zambia, are raising less money for public services."
The Guardian's analysis was conducted by climate watchdog Global Witness, using data from intelligence provider Rystad Energy.
Patrick Galey, head of news investigations at Global Witness, told The Guardian that Big Oil's windfall profits should be a wakeup call to the world about the dangers of relying on fossil fuels.
"Moments of global crisis continue to translate into bumper profits for oil majors while ordinary people pay the price," Galey said. "Until governments kick their fossil fuel addiction, all of our spending power will be held hostage to the whims of strongmen."
Climate advocates have for months been calling for a windfall profits tax on Big Oil during the Iran War as a way to retrieve some of the money consumers have lost during the conflict.
Earlier this month, the climate advocacy organization 350.org renewed its previous call to slap fossil fuel companies with a windfall profits tax, and then invest the revenue into renewable energy sources to provide real long-term relief to global consumers.
Beth Walker, an energy policy expert at climate change think tank E3G, also recommended a windfall profits tax with the aim of ending reliance on dirty energy sources.
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House Democrats officially unveiled five articles of impeachment against Pentagon Secretary Pete Hegseth on Wednesday as the US military announced a deployment of thousands of additional troops to the Middle East, even as President Donald Trump claims his war of choice in Iran is "very close to over."
The seven-page impeachment resolution, led by Iranian American Rep. Yassamin Ansari (D-Ariz.), accuses Hegseth of directing and participating in an assault on Iran "in direct contravention of Article I of the Constitution," which gives Congress the sole authority to declare war; authorizing or failing to prevent the use of deadly military force against civilians, specifically in the horrific attack on the girls' school in southern Iran; potentially violating the Geneva Conventions by declaring that "no quarter" would be given to "our enemies"; and more.
"I am introducing articles of impeachment against Pete Hegseth for repeatedly violating his oath of office and his duty to the Constitution," Ansari said in a statement last week announcing the impeachment push. "Only Congress has the power to declare war, not a rogue president or his lackeys. Hegseth’s reckless endangerment of US servicemembers and repeated war crimes, including bombing a girls’ school in Minab, Iran and willfully targeting civilian infrastructure, are grounds for impeachment and removal from office."
Axios reported Wednesday that Ansari introduced the impeachment articles with eight original cosponsors, all Democrats: Reps. Steve Cohen of Tennessee, Jasmine Crockett of Texas, Nikema Williams of Georgia, Dina Titus of Nevada, David Min of California, Shri Thanedar of Michigan, Brittany Pettersen of Colorado, and Sarah McBride of Delaware.
The Democratic effort to impeach Hegseth is "also supported by several progressive and anti-war groups, including MoveOn, Indivisible, and the Center for International Policy," Axios noted.
The impeachment articles landed in the House as the Pentagon deployed roughly 6,000 additional troops to the Middle East amid a highly tenuous ceasefire in Iran. The Washington Post reported that the Trump administration is "considering the possibility of additional strikes or ground operations" in Iran if the two-week ceasefire deal collapses.
According to the Post, the American forces now heading to the Middle East "include about 6,000 troops aboard the aircraft carrier USS George HW Bush and several warships escorting it."
"About 4,200 others with the Boxer Amphibious Ready Group and its embarked Marine Corps task force, the 11th Marine Expeditionary Unit, are expected to arrive near the end of the month," the Post added.
The forces will join the estimated 55,000 US troops currently stationed in the region for a conflict that Trump has repeatedly claimed is all but over and won.
“We’ve beaten them militarily, totally,” Trump, who is also facing an impeachment push and growing calls for his removal via the 25th Amendment, told Fox Business anchor Maria Bartiromo in an interview that aired Wednesday. “I think it’s close to over, I view it as very close to over."
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Trump also repeated his threat to commit grave war crimes in Iran, declaring that the US military could "take out every one of their bridges in one hour."
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