[Techdirt] Revealed: ISPs Already Violating Net Neutrality To Block Encryption And Make Everyone Less Safe Online

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One of the most frequent refrains from the big broadband players and their friends who are fighting against net neutrality rules is that there’s no evidence that ISPs have been abusing a lack of net neutrality rules in the past, so why would they start now? That does ignore multiple instances of violations in the past, but in combing through the comments submitted to the FCC concerning net neutrality, we came across one very interesting one that actually makes some rather stunning revelations about the ways in which ISPs are currently violating net neutrality/open internet principles in a way designed to block encryption and thus make everyone a lot less secure. The filing comes from VPN company Golden Frog and discusses « two recent examples that show that users are not receiving the open, neutral, and uninterrupted service to which the Commission says they are entitled. » […]

As Golden Frog points out, this is « conceptually similar » to the way in which Comcast was throttling BitTorrent back in 2007 via packet reset headers, which kicked off much of the last round of net neutrality concerns. The differences here are that this isn’t about blocking BitTorrent, but encryption, and it’s a mobile internet access provider, rather than a wired one. […]

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141012/06344928801/revealed-isps-already-violating-net-neutrality-to-block-encryption-make-everyone-less-safe-online.shtml