Insanity: CISPA Just Got Way Worse, And Then Passed On Rushed Vote
Not only did CISPA get pushed through early, but NOW they edited it to make the 4th Amendment not even apply to the Internet! On top of that, as long as someone is in danger of bodily harm or children are threatened, they can do WHATEVER THEY WANT with your data—no oversight, no limit to government power—no nothing.
And remember, this is NOTWITHSTANDING any other laws that might limit Fed power as well…
Crazy. This is Crazyland.
Obama Admin: Surveillance, Censorship (in Iran or Syria) Constitute Human Rights Abuses...But Here? Not So Much.
So the Obama administration has come forward to say that online censorship and surveillance for Syrians and Iranians by their governments constitutes “human rights abuses” and he has even signed an executive order to stop it. How he can even keep a straight face while doing that, I’m not sure. Here in America we had SOPA, the house is getting ready to vote on CISPA, and of course the wonderful NDAA. Drones have been approved to patrol our skies, the TSA is now doing random bag checks on public buses, the NSA is building a $2 Billion dollar data farm in Utah to house, well, we aren’t exactly sure because they won’t even tell Congress at inquiry, so why would they tell the American people?
We are clearly living in a police state, but hey, none of these things are human rights abuses…in America.
Right.
~Mel
Fight CISPA: A Rant | Melissa Melton | Infowars Reporter Contest Entry #2 (by cloudylissa)
The ambiguous Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act aka CISPA is just the newest SOPA successor and big government attempt to regulate our freedom and reduce our privacy on the Internet under the guise of homeland defense and cybersecurity.
This is a completely unscripted rant (there were obviously many more points I could’ve made but I just flipped on the camera and started talking) and is minus bells and whistles…really just a chance to start a conversation about why we need to take a stand against this latest tyrannical injustice masquerading as government protection.
Find out how to write to your representatives and tell them to vote against CISPA here: https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml
You can also sign a petition against CISPA here: http://act.demandprogress.org/letter/cispa/
~Mel
CISPA: Congress Takes Another Run at the Internet
Daisy Luther
Inalienably Yours
April 10, 2012
Once upon a time there was a bill called SOPA. Some evil trolls who worked and conducted meetings in a big domed building in Washington DC tried to make a wicked law to allow them to close people’s internet-based businesses and websites whenever they wanted, for the silliest of reasons, much to the delight of the head ogre who lived in a big White House. The people of the land all stood up angrily and complained to fight against the law, and through their efforts, defeated the trolls and the head ogre. The laws of the internet remained fair, the trolls were duly chastened, the ogre pretended benevolence and the people lived happily ever after, internet freedoms intact…..
Well…..until the dragon CISPA reared it’s ugly head.
As we predicted here, the government has been busily creating a law to “protect” us from cyber-attacks like the one recently threatened by Anonymous.
The stated purpose of CISPA is “To provide for the sharing of certain cyber threat intelligence and cyber threat information between the intelligence community and cybersecurity entities, and for other purposes.”
(Personally, my favorite line in that statement is “and for other purposes.” It sets the ambiguous tone for the rest of the bill.)
The outrages that are blatantly laid out in CISPA (The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act) are bad enough, but the vagueness of the language takes the intrusion to a level previously unheard of in a country born of the blood of Patriots and allegedly protected by the Constitution.
CISPA allows “cyber entities” (internet service providers, social networks and cell phone companies, to name a few examples) to circumvent internet privacy laws. In an interview with Russia Today, Kendall Burman of the Center for Democracy and Technology stated that, “the bill, as written, allows the US government to involve itself into any online correspondence… if it believes there is reason to suspect cyber crime.
As with other authoritarian attempts at censorship that have come through Congress in recent times, of course, the wording within the CISPA allows for the government to interpret the law in such a number of degrees that any online communication or interaction could be suspect and thus unknowingly monitored.”
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights advocacy group, states, “It effectively creates a ‘cybersecurity’’ exemption to all existing laws…There are almost no restrictions on what can be collected and how it can be used, provided a company can claim it was motivated by ‘cybersecurity purposes.”
In the spirit of making things clear, the bill contains several definitions that only add to the general air of vagueness.
CYBER THREAT INTELLIGENCE ~ “information pertaining to protecting a system or network from—(A) efforts to degrade, disrupt, or destroy such system or network; or (B) theft or misappropriation of private or government information, intellectual property, or personally identifiable information.”
SELF-PROTECTED ENTITY ~ “an entity, other than an individual, that provides goods or services for cyber security purposes to itself.”
PROTECTED ENTITY ~ “‘protected entity’ means an entity, other than an individual, that contracts with a cybersecurity provider for goods or services to be used for cybersecurity purposes.”
“Cybersecurity” is not defined in the document.
Despite the fact that the bill specifically states that entities cannot use the powers granted “to gain an unfair competitive advantage” one must wonder how a profit can be made via CISPA, especially after the corporate outcry against SOPA, which would have greatly restricted the activities of computer and communications companies. Companies like Facebook, AT&T and Verizon have jumped on the CISPA bandwagon with both feet.
In a letter to Congress, Facebook VP Joel Kaplan wrote, “Your thoughtful bipartisan approach will enhance the ability of companies like Facebook to address cyberthreats…..Your legislation removes burdensome rules that can currently inhibit protection of the cyber-ecosystem.”
Fred Humphries, a Microsoft VP commended Congress in a statement. “The legislation would seek to eliminate barriers and disincentives that currently prevent effective information-sharing to guard against cyber-attacks.”
The United States Chamber of Commerce VP Bruce Josten stated the group’s support of CISPA as “an important step in assisting the nation’s public and private sectors to prevent, deter, and mitigate the array of cyber threats from illicit actors without imposing burdensome regulations on industry.”
The following companies have all written letters of support for CISPA (you can read the letters by clicking on the name of each company).
AT&T
Boeing
BSA
Business Roundtable
CSC
COMPTEL
CTIA - The Wireless Association
Cyber, Space & Intelligence Association
Edison Electric
EMC
Exelon
Facebook
The Financial Services Roundtable
IBM
Independent Telephone & Telecommunications Alliance
Information Technology Industry Council
Intel
Internet Security Alliance
Lockheed Martin
Microsoft
National Cable & Telecommunications Association
NDIA
Oracle
Symantec
TechAmerica
US Chamber of Commerce
US Telecom - The Broadband Association
Verizon
You can find email and mailing addresses for the companies above on their letterhead when you read their glowing commendations for CISPA. Write to them and let them know that your dollars will not be spent with them, either now or in the future, unless they publicly withdraw their support for this bill.
You can find the email addresses of your members of Congress HERE.
Sources:
Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011
US House of Representatives Information on CISPA
New CISPA Cybersecurity Bill Will Censor the Web
Welcome to your very own Orwellian nightmare!
(Source: beatyourselfup, via smell-the-revolution)
Secret Plan Underway To Revive Internet Censorship Bill SOPA
Motion Picture Association of America CEO “confident” similar legislation will become law
How the US uses sexual humiliation as a political tool to control the masses
This:
In a five-four ruling this week, the supreme court decided that anyone can be strip-searched upon arrest for any offense, however minor, at any time. This horror show ruling joins two recent horror show laws: the NDAA, which lets anyone be arrested forever at any time, and HR 347, the “trespass bill”, which gives you a 10-year sentence for protesting anywhere near someone with secret service protection. These criminalizations of being human follow, of course, the mini-uprising of the Occupy movement.
And This:
As Chris Hedges wrote in his riveting account of the NDAA: “There are now 1,271 government agencies and 1,931 private companies that work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States, the Washington Post reported in a 2010 series by Dana Priest and William M Arken. There are 854,000 people with top-secret security clearances, the reporters wrote, and in Washington, DC, and the surrounding area 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2011.”
Even Congress Wants To Know What The NSA Is Doing With This $2 Billion Utah Spy Center
Excerpt:
Maybe you’ve heard of it and maybe you haven’t, but in Bluffdale, Utah alongside one of the largest polygamist sects in America, the NSA is building a one-million-square-foot data collection center — five times the size of the U.S. capital.
Despite immense secrecy, and construction workers with Top Secret clearances, news of the project made it to the pages of Wired last month. Intelligence authority James Bamford wrote that the center is part of President Bush’s “total information awareness” program that was killed by Congress in 2003 in response to public outrage over its potential for invading Americans privacy.
One senior intelligence official formerly involved with the project told Bamford “this is more than just a data center,” that it’s a code breaking megalopolis the likes of which the world has never seen.
Several years ago the NSA made a major leap in breaking complex encryptions used in everything from “financial information, stock transactions, business deals, foreign military and diplomatic secrets, legal documents, confidential personal communications.”
The official concluded by saying “Everybody’s a target; everybody with communication is a target.”
The story caused such a stir that the NSA’s chief General Keith Alexander was called before Congress last week to testify about the project and categorically denied the facility will be used to spy on American citizens.
