AT&T Throwing FundRaiser For Senate Chair Ahead Of Privacy Hearings

Scandal after scandal after scandal has resulted in many finally realizing that the United States is likely going to have to craft at least some basic privacy guidelines moving forward. The problem: with so many justly wary of Congressional Luddites screwing it up, and so many wealthy industries lobbying jointly to try and weaken the potential guidelines, this isn't going to be a pretty process. If we come out of it with anything even closely resembling a decent privacy law for the digital age (one that doesn't make things worse) we'll be very fortunate.

But it's hard to craft much of any meaningful privacy rules when Congress is so grotesquely beholden to the industries they're supposed to be holding accountable. That was made pretty obvious when the telecom sector lobbied to kill some basic FCC privacy guidelines the FCC had approved before they could even take effect back in 2017. Those rules simply required that ISPs be transparent about what data is being collected and who it would be sold to, something that could have proven extremely useful in the wake of these revelations of carriers selling your location data to any and every nitwit in America.

And as Congress begins holding public hearings to contemplate what privacy rules should look like, telecom giants like AT&T are again likely to have an outsized influence on what those laws will likely look like. For example, AT&T and other telecom giants will be holding a fundraiser for Senator Roger Wicker, chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, the night before a major hearing on privacy regulations:

"According to the invitation for Tuesday's fundraiser, which will be supporting a group backing Wicker's reelection called RFW PAC, it costs $1,500 to attend the event as a guest, $2,500 to attend as a sponsor and $5,000 to co-host.The next day Wicker's committee will hold its first hearing of the new Congress on crafting comprehensive data privacy legislation - a key issue for the telecom industry."

The fact that a huge swath of folks don't see a problem here speaks to how Sisyphean the effort for meaningful privacy rules is going to be. Like so many problems (like health care or broadband availability), you can't actually fix the problem until you address government corruption. And you can't fix government corruption until you address lobbying reform. And you can't fix lobbying reform thanks to... lobbying. It would be funny in a Keystone-cops-esque way if the end result wasn't so repeatedly and painfully tragic.

AT&T is, you'll recall, a company busted charging broadband users $500 more per year just to opt-out of snoopvertising, effectively making privacy a luxury option available only to those who can afford it. It's the same company busted selling user location data to shady middlemen, covertly modifying user packets to track users around the internet, and with a long, deep history of not only sucking up to the NSA and spying on Americans, but also advising the government on how best to tap dance around existing wiretap and privacy laws.

Again, AT&T is the very last company you want having any additional leverage when it comes to crafting meaningful privacy law. Especially given that this Wednesday's hearing is already missing any objective experts or consumer groups in the testimony lineup. And yet they're likely to have more of an impact on what our looming new privacy law looks like than probably any other companies short of Apple, Facebook, and Google.