Despite protests from privacy and consumer advocacy groups, the Republican-led Senate has voted along party lines to roll back broadband privacy rules that were approved just months ago by the previous Obama administration.

Last October, the Federal Communications Commission introduced new rules that meant Internet Service Providers such as Comcast Inc. and Verizon Wireless Inc. would have to gain the consent of their customers before being able to share or sell information relating to their personal browsing history.

Those rules were still awaiting implementation at the time of yesterday’s vote. The fact is that they were never likely to be implemented anyway, since the new FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, a Republican and previously a lawyer for Verizon, had already came out in opposition to them shortly after his appointment. Pai argued that the rules were “not consistent” with the FCC’s privacy standards, adding that they also gave companies such as Google Inc. and Facebook Inc. an unfair advantage in advertising because they only govern ISPs.

Speaking at the Senate floor on Wednesday night, resolution sponsor Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) offered a similar argument, saying the rules needed to be repealed “in order to restore balance to the internet ecosystem and provide certainty to consumers.” He added that the rules amounted to “inconsistent treatment of data.”

Unsurprisingly the 52-48 vote was widely condemned by privacy groups, activists and some Democrats.

“With today’s vote, Senate Republicans have just made it easier for American’s sensitive information about their health, finances and families to be used, shared, and sold to the highest bidder without their permission,” said Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) in a statement. “The American public wants us to strengthen privacy protections, not weaken them. We should not have to forgo our fundamental right to privacy just because our homes and phones are connected to the Internet.”

Evan Greer, a campaign manager at digital rights group Fight for the Future, was even more damning of the vote, accusing Republicans of using a “blatantly undemocratic Congressional procedure” in order to gut consumer’s basic protections. “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,” Greer said.

Those sentiments were echoed widely on Twitter, which saw a bombardment of tweets condemning the vote. One of the most vociferous critics was Jake Laperruque (@JakeLaperruque), a privacy fellow at the Constitution Project, who said the vote meant American’s browsing histories were now up for sale to the highest bidder:

This is bad for all Americans – the privacy of your Internet browsing is now for sale by Comcast and Verizon

— ?Jake Laperruque? (@JakeLaperruque) March 23, 2017

Still, other users tried to look on the bright side of things, with one person saying the vote might create an opportunity for smaller ISPs to market themselves as protectors of privacy rights:

In the US, there’s suddenly a commercial advantage to being an ‘ethical’ ISP

— Martin Bryant (@MartinSFP) March 23, 2017

Not all privacy advocates were against the vote however. In a surprising move, former FCC Chairman and current Co-Chairman of the 21st Century Privacy Coalition Jon Leibowitz said he was backing the vote to end ISP privacy rules. Leibowitz, who famously championed the do-not-track mechanism for online ad privacy in 2010 when he was still FCC chairman, said the rules introduced last year were unbalanced.

“During the drafting of the rule, the FTC raised substantial concerns about the FCC’s proposed rule,” Leibowitz said in a statement. “While the FCC ultimately addressed some of these concerns, it failed to address the most important critiques in its final rule. The FCC did not embrace a technology neutral approach to privacy, setting out an overbroad definition of sensitive data out of step with consumer expectations, and failed to place sensible restrictions on its breach notification standard in its flawed rule.”

The Senate used an obscure law called the Congressional Review Act to roll back the FCC’s new regulations. As the Washington Post has explained, the CRA allows Congress to nullify executive branch regulations. The Senate can do this with a simple majority vote — meaning the Democrats do not currently have the power to filibuster CRA bills. The CRA also prevents the FCC from passing “substantially similar” rules in the future.

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