Board game magnate vows to buy & publish internet history of congress members
US Republican representatives’ decision to allow Internet Service Providers to sell customers’ private data has prompted one man to promise to buy and publish the internet history of everyone who voted for the bill.
If this shit passes I will buy the browser history of every congressman and congressional aide and publish it. cc @SpeakerRyanhttps://t.co/cOL3mx6JuG
— Max Temkin (@MaxTemkin) March 27, 2017
@maxtemkin I beg you! Start with Paul Ryan! He has been raging war against the females of humanity
— Burtongirl (@burtongirlpb) March 30, 2017
Max Temkin, founder of Cards Against Humanity, has promised to personally purchase the browsing history of every member of Congress who voted for the bill, and publish the contents on the internet.
READ MORE: Internet privacy rules removed by Congress
The bill, S.J. Res. 34 reverses a Federal Communications Commission (FCC) privacy rule that required ISPs to seek customer permission before sharing browsing history. The rule also made providers inform customers if any of the data was breached by hackers.
The bill allows ISPs to sell private browsing data to marketers and others without informing internet users.
Some 215 Republican congressmen in the House of Representatives voted in favor of the bill on Wednesday, with 15 choosing to vote against it.
The House vote came after the Senate voted 50-48 to repeal the FCC rules last week. The bill will soon be sent to the White House to be signed into law by the president.
Since the bill has passed, Temkin promised he would go ahead with the plan, and warned people against crowdfunding pages claiming to be part of the move.
Another campaign has been started by privacy activist Adam McElhaney to raise money to buy congress members’ browsing history and has reached $156,977.
@nickkokonas IP blocks of congressmen and congressional staffers are known, see @congressedits
— Max Temkin (@MaxTemkin) March 28, 2017
@MaxTemkin guys, there's not going to be a fucking Kickstarter. If and when the data is available, we'll buy it and publish it publicly.
— Max Temkin (@MaxTemkin) March 28, 2017
It isn’t clear how Temkin would go about purchasing each person’s browsing history, but he said “IP blocks of congressmen and congressional staffers are known.”
“If and when any data becomes available, myself and Cards Against Humanity will do whatever we can to acquire it and publish it. We have a long track record of activism and spending around government transparency issues,” he wrote on Reddit.
“This may take a long time. We may have to file FOIA requests. We may have to buy browsing data for Congressional office building ZIP codes and then p-hack our way to statistical significance in an attempt to fish spurious correlations out of unreliable datasets, but we've done it before.”
215 members of Congress just voted to let your ISP spy on what type of underwear you buy and sell that data to advertisers #BroadbandPrivacypic.twitter.com/m1HkVptuNt
— Fight for the Future (@fightfortheftr) March 28, 2017
Congress voted to allow your internet provider to sell your browser history. Long story short, goodbye sweet internet.
— Conan O'Brien (@ConanOBrien) March 29, 2017
Temkin reminded social media users that donating to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), an organization that fights for net neutrality and privacy, is a more material way to make a difference. He said that Cards Against Humanity would match up to $10,000 of donations made to the EFF.