Someone should tell this clown that it's 2017 and his position is untenable with how most of us live and work in the modern world.

Source: Oliver Wills

Rep. Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) offered a strangely antiquated defense of Donald Trump’s recent decision to roll back an Obama-era protection that stopped internet providers from selling information about their customer’s browsing habits.

When a concerned voter at Sensenbrenner’s town hall asked about Trump’s assault on internet privacy, Sensenbrenner told her “nobody’s got to use the internet.”

VOTER: Facebook is not comparable to an ISP. I do not have to go on Facebook. I do have one provider. I live two miles from here, and I have one choice. I don’t have to go on Google. My ISP provider is different from those providers.

SENSENBRENNER: Well, you know, again, nobody’s got to use the internet. You know, the thing is that if you start regulating the internet like a utility, if you did that right at the beginning, we would have no internet. And internet companies have invested an awful lot of money and have almost universal service now. The fact is, I don’t think it’s my job to tell you that you cannot get advertising or your information being sold. My job, I think, is to tell you that you have the opportunity to do it, and then you take it upon yourself to make the choice that government should give you. That’s what the law has been, and I think we ought to have more choices rather than fewer choices, with the government controlling our everyday lives.

The internet is vital to modern life. It is used to communicate, conduct commerce, and disseminate information like no medium ever has. It is absurd for a congressman to assert that usage of the internet is optional. He should know better.

The necessity of the internet is what has made Trump’s decision to strip online privacy protections so unpopular. Only 6 percent of people polled support the law, while 83 percent opposed it — including 80 percent of Republicans.