Questions around privacy on the internet continue to swirl after Congress repealed FCC’s broadband privacy rules. After it was repealed, the chairman of the FCC promised that Internet users personal information would still be protected. However, not everyone is convinced.



Senator Thune serves on the Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee, which deals with the ideas of net neutrality. Thune is one of the Senators who supported the repeal, and KELOLAND News asked him if people should be concerned about their information.



President Donald Trump recently signed a bill that repealed rules that would have barred internet service providers from selling your online information to third parties. Thune says he believes everyone should still feel safe with their information when they go online.



“Providers have policies against it. The FCC polices that. The FTC if they’re a bad actor polices that and enforces privacy, enforcement actions against people who might violate any of that,” Thune said.



Senator Thune stands in front of a group of students at Dakota State University, talking about a wide variety of technology topics. Student Kyle Williams, a network security major, says he wishes he would have heard more from Thune about net neutrality. He has concerns about not just security being compromised, but also services like Netflix being able to charge more.



“So for me it could get to a point where it kind of spirals out of control. I feel like there needs to be limits set on that. I think that the Senate should actually go back and revisit these ideas in the future and look at maybe reinstating some parts of net neutrality,” Williams said.



Thune says the rules that were repealed were just proposed and never actually took effect. He says he supports the repeal because it creates more set regulations across the board.



“We think it’s important to have one unified consistent standard that applies to everybody, whether you’re an internet service provider or whether your a web company, an edge companies. What the proposed rules were going to do is create two sets of standards,” Thune said.



While Thune is confident with the changes, others will keep close watch to see if there’s any lasting effects moving forward.







Thune says that if net neutrality were to be rolled back in some way by the FCC, then you would probably be going back to when the FTC polices everything like in the past.