Demand Progress Seeks Funds for Pro-Privacy Rules Push

Demand Progress is asking for contributions for a "grassroots" push to fight Republicans' efforts to repeal the FCC's broadband privacy rules.

The Senate voted last week along party lines (50 to 48 (with two senators not voting) to invalidate the October order, which ISPs, advertisers and some others want either Congress or the FCC to roll back. The House is expected to vote on the bill Tuesday (March 28), the House Energy & Commerce Committee press office confirmed.

In an email solicitation on Sunday, Demand Progress made it all about Comcast—a frequent "big media" target.

"Will you chip in $5 to help stop Comcast from selling my personal financial information and browsing history," it asked, pointing out that the bill would now be taken up in the House, "unless we can kill this awful idea."

The group called it an "emergency campaign," given that the President is widely expected to sign the bill.

Using words like "shock" and "horror," it says that "it's going to take a major rapid-response push to keep the pressure building and demand that Republicans as well as Democrats in the House of Representatives say no to this outrageous invasion of privacy."

Independently, Fight for the Future tweeted an "urgent" call for action pointing to a Tuesday vote and saying it would mean searches getting hijacked and web traffic getting snooped and tracked and sold. "We need to melt phones in DC to stop this," it said.

The bill actually prevents rules from going into place, most of which have never been in place before and would not be in place until the end of the year regardless of what happened.

The FCC docket on the rules has been by far the busiest over the past month, with over 12,000 submissions in the last 30 days.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.