An Investigation on the FCC Net Neutrality Repeal and its Effects on Security and Privacy

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Presented at BSidesTampa 2019 by

Van Nguyen

The repeal of net neutrality has caused a great public outcry from academic, law makers, consumer advocates, and the end-users. Net neutrality was a FCC order that specified the principles for Internet Service Providers. The most prevalent principles were related to bandwidth throttling, preferential treatments, and privacy. Some described the action of the FCC would lead to the end of the Internet and consumer privacy. There have been many articles and public forums discussing about the fallout of the ruling, especially the recent action at the Supreme Court. In this paper, we would like to use the opportunity to filter out fact from fiction. We also discuss the nature of net neutrality, the history, the arguments for and against, and the roles of the FCC and their many orders. The implication of repeal on security and privacy is also a big focus of this paper. We present a few scenarios specifying what an ISP can do and cannot do. Finally, we layout the protection the consumers have for their privacy in the absence of the net neutrality rules.