The U.S. House of Representatives Tuesday voted to repeal privacy rules that prevent Internet Service Providers from selling their customer’s web browsing histories without their consent, following a similar vote in the Senate last week.

The House voted 215-205 to scrap privacy rules created by the Federal Communications Commission last year. The rules had not yet come into effect. Just prior to the vote, the White House issued a statement saying President Donald Trump supported the bill, which means the decision should become law very soon.

What it means for consumers is that their Internet provider will now be able to sell every bit of data they collect about their browsing behavior to third parties, without letting them know or asking for their consent.

There’s reason to be concerned about this, as ISPs arguably know more than anyone about their customers — their names and addresses, ages, Social Security numbers and more. They also know which websites their customers visit, when and how often.

Using that information, ISPs can build fairly comprehensive profiles of their customers. They know or can easily infer what their political and sexual leanings are, who has kids and who doesn’t, what medical conditions people have and so much more. All of that data can be very valuable in the right hands, and Tuesday’s vote means it will soon be offered for sale to third parties without users’ knowledge.

Prior to the vote, Republicans argued that the FCC’s privacy rules were unfair because they held ISPs to stricter standards than web giants such as Google Inc. and Facebook Inc., which are already allowed to collect and sell users’ data without their consent. Rep. Leonard Lance (R-N.J.) told reporters that the FCC’s rules therefore created a false sense of privacy for consumers. “In reality, the FCC’s rules arbitrarily treat ISPs differently,” he said.

But the vote came as a big blow to privacy advocates, who pointed out that the rules of the game are different for ISPs. “Google doesn’t see everything you do on the Internet, they only see the traffic you send to them,” the Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote in an explainer article. “And you can always choose to use a different website if you want to avoid Google’s tracking. None of that is true about your ISP … That’s why we need the FCC’s privacy rules. ISPs are in a position of power, and they’ve shown they’re willing to abuse that power.”

Others argued that the vote was more about money than protecting consumer’s rights, and that politicians were simply voting to appease their corporate sponsors.

“Today Congress proved once again that they care more about the wishes of the corporations that fund their campaigns than they do about the safety and security of their constituents,” said Evan Greer, campaign director of Fight for the Future, a digital privacy rights group. “Gutting these privacy rules won’t just allow Internet Service Providers to spy on us and sell our personal information, it will also enable more unconstitutional mass government surveillance, and fundamentally undermine our cybersecurity by making our sensitive personal information vulnerable to hackers, identity thieves, and foreign governments.”

Those sentiments were echoed widely on Twitter too. Karl Bode, a writer for the Techdirt website, cautioned that the vote doesn’t bode well for net neutrality either:

Next up: killing net neutrality and eroding FCC & FTC oversight of Comcast, AT&T and Verizon even further. You know, for the little guy. https://t.co/nvEvARsb9h

— Karl Bode (@KarlBode) March 28, 2017

Meanwhile, Mark Bao, a former research assistant at the Center for Decision Sciences at Columbia University, used more colorful language to point out the apparent hypocrisy of Republicans who voted to repeal the laws:

If Congresspeople really gave a shit about privacy, which is how they’ll try to spin their vote, they should have proposed a better solution

— Mark Bao (@markbao) March 28, 2017

In spite of the harsh backlash from privacy advocates, it’s unlikely they’ll be able to do much about changing it now the vote has gone through. Republicans rolled back the FFC’s rules using an obscure law known as the Congressional Review Act, which not only allows Congress to nullify executive branch regulations, but also prohibits “substantially similar” rules from being implemented in the future.

Photo: ssoosay Smoke