, Columnist
Privacy Is the Price We Pay for Our Internet Lives
Allowing internet providers to sell your data doesn't change much when search engines and social networks already do the same.
We are no longer entirely human.
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President Donald Trump is poised to sign legislation to overturn Federal Communications Commission rules forbidding internet service providers from selling data they have vacuumed up about the online habits of their customers. Privacy groups are understandably perturbed. But I wonder whether all the brouhaha is just shouting at the horse to come back long after he’s left the barn.
Yes, it’s a little disturbing that Verizon and AT&T will be able to start behaving like Google and Facebook. But Google and Facebook are already behaving like Google and Facebook. They recognize what we ourselves refuse to see: that we are no longer entirely human.