Row over US ISP customer data sales

US politicians have voted to remove rules that demanded ISPs got permission from customers before selling their browsing histories.

The US Senate voted by a narrow majority to repeal the rules that were first approved in October 2016.

Politicians who called for the rules to be dropped said they were "harmful".

The decision was called a "crushing loss" for privacy by digital rights group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

'Gold mine'

The rules were drawn up when the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) was overseen by a broadly democratic leadership. The requirements, which also covered the ways ISPs stopped data being stolen, were due to come into force by December 2017.

The Trump presidency led to changes at the top of the FCC and prompted scrutiny of some of its decisions - including the broadband privacy provisions.

Members of the US Senate who introduced the measure to overturn the FCC rules said they were "overreaching" and could "stifle" economic growth.

ISPs and advertising groups had lobbied for the rules to be dropped.

Current FCC chairman Ajit Pai, who was appointed by President Trump, said the rules threatened to confuse consumers as they were different to those imposed on web firms such as Google and Facebook.

Following the decision by the Senate, the proposal now passes to the House of Representatives which has an overwhelming Republican majority and is likely to be approved.

If the rules are dropped, US ISPs would be allowed to gather data on customers, their browsing histories, viewing habits, location and app usage. This package of data can then be sold to advertisers or marketing firms without letting customers know who is getting it or how it was gathered.

Democrat Senator Bill Nelson, who wanted the rules to be approved, said the repeal of the rules would let ISPs amass a "gold mine" of data.

"They want to collect and use this information without providing transparency or being held accountable," Mr Nelson told news site Ars Technica.

The EFF urged Americans to contact their representatives to ask them to "kill" the proposal in the House. ISPs had "incredible access" to what people did online, it said.

"They shouldn't be able to profit off of the information about what you search for, read about, purchase, and more without your consent," it added.

Bloquear 'apps' viola el principio de neutralidad de internet: Mintic

Prohibir el uso de Uber y otras plataformas digitales que prestan el servicio de transporte especial, viola el principio de neutralidad de internet en Colombia.

Ese es uno de los puntos del concepto que el Ministerio de las Tecnologías y la Información (Mintic) radicó el martes 23 de marzo en el Tribunal de Cundinamarca, que estudia la demanda del Ministerio de Transporte contra Uber, apelando que la aplicación vulnera los derechos a la libre competencia.

Dicha petición fue aceptada por el Tribunal el pasado 14 de marzo y como parte del proceso se ordenó vincular al Mintic y a la Agencia Nacional del Espectro (ANE).

El escrito de la cartera Tic se opone a las medidas cautelares solicitadas por el Mintrasporte y argumenta que dicha acción va en contravía del Artículo 56, la ley 1450 de 2011, en el cual el Estado les garantiza a los ciudadanos no restringir el acceso y uso a cualquier contenido o aplicación a través de internet, precepto que se violaría con las pretensiones de la demanda.

En diálogo con EL TIEMPO, Daniel Quintero, viceministro TI, aseguró que bloquear Uber emitiría un concepto negativo a la comunidad internacional y detendría el proceso que lleva Colombia hacia la economía digital.

“El bloqueo de una aplicación mandaría un mensaje terrible a escala mundial. En los países en donde el servicio de Uber es ilegal, la aplicación no se bloquea, precisamente por el principio de neutralidad de la red. Esto ya hablaría de lo atípico que sería restringirla en nuestro país”, añade el viceministro.

Es importante recordar que el Ministerio TIC no tiene las facultades para bloquear aplicaciones. Quienes se encargan de ese proceso son los operadores, siempre y cuando tengan una orden de un juez.
Por su parte, Uber aseguró que defender la libertad de internet es también proteger a las nuevas generaciones de emprendedores.

“El Ministerio TIC ha emitido un contundente concepto que defiende el principio del internet libre y que busca proteger el derecho a usar aplicaciones”, dijeron voceros de Uber Colombia.

Por su parte, Uber aseguró que defender la libertad de internet es también proteger a las nuevas generaciones de emprendedores.

“El Ministerio TIC ha emitido un contundente concepto que defiende el principio del internet libre y que busca proteger el derecho a usar aplicaciones”, dijeron voceros de Uber Colombia.

La cartera de transporte no quiso emitir comentarios sobre el tema. Se espera que la próxima semana se conozca una decisión final sobre esta demanda.

La Agencia Nacional del Espectro le aseguró a este diario que quienes usan aplicaciones o plataformas digitales a través de internet móvil no requieren permiso de uso del espectro radioeléctrico, pues no son los prestadores del servicio de telecomunicaciones ni los proveedores de redes de telecomunicaciones, solo son usuarios de dichos servicios.

Es por ello que el uso de una plataforma digital, no viola las normas de telecomunicaciones ni del régimen de espectro, pues no existe un uso clandestino o una operación no autorizada de redes, pues el permiso de uso de espectro lo tienen los operadores móviles.

EL TIEMPO.

UNITS OF INFORMATION

In computing and telecommunications, a unit of information is the capacity of some standard data storage system or communication channel, used to measure the capacities of other systems and channels. In information theory, units of information are also used to measure the information contents or entropy of random variables.

Units derived from bit

BIT: The smallest unit of data in a computer is called Bit (Binary Digit). A bit has a single binary value, either 0 or 1. In most computer systems, there are eight bits in a byte. The value of a bit is usually stored as either above or below a designated level of electrical charge in a single capacitor within a memory device.

Nibble: Half a byte (four bits) is called a nibble.

Byte: Historically, a byte was the number of bits used to encode a character of text in the computer, which depended on computer hardware architecture; but today it almost always means eight bits – that is, an octet. Are almost always used to specify the sizes of computer files and the capacity of storage units. Most modern computers and peripheral devices are designed to manipulate data in whole bytes or groups of bytes, rather than individual bits.

Octet: In some systems, the term octet is used for an eight-bit unit instead of byte. In many systems, four eight-bit bytes or octets form a 32-bit word. In such systems, instructions lengths are sometimes expressed as full-word (32 bits in length) or half-word (16 bits in length).

Kilobyte: A Kilobyte (kb or Kbyte) is approximately a thousand bytes (actually, 2 to the 10^th power, or decimal 1,024 bytes).

Megabyte :As a measure of computer processor storage and real and virtual memory, a megabyte (abbreviated MB) is 2 to the 20^th power byte, or 1,048,576 bytes in decimal notation.

Gigabyte: A Gigabyte (pronounced Gig-a-bite with hard G’s) is a measure of computer data storage capacity and is “roughly” a billion bytes. A gigabyte is two to the 30^th power, or 1,073,741,824 in decimal notation.

Terabyte: A Terabyte is a measure of computer storage capacity and is 2 to the 40^th power of 1024 gigabytes.

Petabyte: A Petabyte (PB) is a measure of memory or storage capacity and is 2 to the 50^th power bytes or, in decimal, approximately a thousand terabytes (1024 terabytes).

Exabyte: An Exabyte (EB) is a large unit of computer data storage, two to the sixtieth power bytes. The prefix exa means one billion billion, or on quintillion, which is a decimal term. Two to the sixtieth power is actually 1,152,921,504,606,846,976 bytes in decimal, or somewhat over a quintillion (or ten to the eighteenth power) bytes. It is common to say that an Exabyte is approximately one quintillion bytes. In decimal terms, an Exabyte is a billion gigabytes.

Zettabyte:A Zettabyte (ZB) is equal to one sextillion bytes. It is commonly abbreviated ZB. At this time, no computer has one Zettabyte of storage. It has 1024 Exabytes.

Yottabyte: A Yottabyte is equal to one septillion bytes. It is commonly abbreviated YB. At this time, no computer has one Zettabyte of storage. It has 1024 Zettabytes.

BIOGRAPHY:

NORTON