New CISPA Cybersecurity Bill Even Worse Than SOPA

An anonymous reader writes "As congressmen in Washington consider how to handle the ongoing issue of cyberattacks, some legislators have lent their support to a new act that, if passed, would let the government pry into the personal correspondence of anyone of their choosing. This is SOPA being passed in smaller chunks... 'H.R. 3523, a piece of legislation dubbed the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (or CISPA for short) has vague definitions that could allow Congress to circumvent existing exemptions to online privacy laws and essentially monitor, censor and stop any online communication that it considers disruptive to the government or private parties.'"

Comments

Cant stop a moving train

[nurb432]

You can only slow it down as this train is being driven by the federal government with virtually unlimited power, money, and time.. All this stuff ( and more ) will eventually pass and our digital freedom goes out the door.

Just a matter of time. Enjoy it while it lasts.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, and even if they can't slip it past the public eye, all they need to do is attach it as a rider to the We Love America And The Troops And Kittens Act Of 2013 and it'll pass unanimously.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[TheGratefulNet]

agreed, its only a matter of 'which year' is the actual death of the free internet. free as in freedom; I don't give a rat's as about money matters, in this context.

pressure will not stop and sooner or later, we'll lose what we have become used to. we've had some good internet days during the last decade or two; but the government AND big business have teamed up to ruin it.

remember that. remember who really ruined things.

darknets will be the only thing left for truly freedom-based communications.

what a world we have created; or allowed to grow in this direction. so sad that 'money and power is all that matters'.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[Anonymous Coward]

yeah you can. you tear up the tracks.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[jhoegl]

Perhaps, or perhaps this was inevitable. One can draw direct parallels of crimes between the 1800s- and now and internet crimes.
Do I like that a non-regulated entity, such as the government which can claim all sorts of reasons to keep information and secrets, has access to this information?
Nope
Do I have a choice?
Yes. I can stop using the internet, or limit my actions on the internet so that we revert back to the 1990s. I mean, it is illegal for the government to open my mail.
And even though we as normal citizens see a direct connection between internet messages and mail, we are still left with few options.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[msheekhah]

Here's a solution. Once this passes, everyone cancel their internet service. All of it. Use work internet because we don't pay for it, but cancel all of our residential internet. Instead of blacking out the internet, we just quit the internet. An internet not worth browsing is marginally different than no internet.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[Anonymous Coward]

The way to fight legal snooping isn't to fight each and every snooping bill. Eventually one will pass. The way is to make a law saying the oppposite, a guarantee of privacy bill. Offense>defense.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[spire3661]

'that year' has already passed. All that is left is the "I will make it legal" stage of the empire.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[Anonymous Coward]

what a world we have created; or allowed to grow in this direction. so sad that 'money and power is all that matters'.

I postulate that money reify power.
That all humanity story is centred around power.
Therefore we have not created the world that way neither did ours ancestors.
Neither did the inventor of money.
Look at nature, it is pretty ugly sometime.
Why would it be any different for us (maybe not you and me personally but us as a specie) ?

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed, it seems we reliving the dark ages... with no renaissance at sight. BTW, "renaissance" IIRC means "rebirth" (of culture, in reference to how advanced the Classical Greeks were).

Now, that said, let's have in mind it's not an international phenomenon. Even some First World nations are not that affected (like e.g. those north of the Netherlands). The catch is that the USA are kind of a Central Station for cultural interchange (as England and France were in the past), so we're in for some deep trouble. Were it possible to bypass the USA while it sunks to deeper ignorance, we could live somehow almost unscathed and could even help the USA get out of darkness sooner.

But that would involve finding another nation able to host libraries, standards and organizations which are key to the world. Switzerland already does that and with a multiple language tradition could prove to be an ideal candidate for such role. Another one would be possibly be Norway (the language has been argued to be easy to learn for English-speakers), but with the recent episodes of US pressure on it... I doubt they'd be able to defend themselves.

Oh, well. Another problem is that Freedom requires a determined defense, which used to be easy to get in the USA but it's not often given its deserving value throughout the world. Germany now has such a context which puts Freedom as a first quality asset, but I frankly don't know how long it can be sustained. Maybe a France+Germany+Switzerland joint effort might work...

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[EdIII]

agreed, its only a matter of 'which year' is the actual death of the freedom

FTFY.

Freedom is not good for the 1%. They have gone by different names in the past of course. It is a cycle. The 1% grows through abuse after abuse, and gradual poolings of influence and resources.

Eventually they will push it too far and either 1) vastly lower their own standards of living by taking out society with it, at which time they tend to migrate somewhere else (like a virus) or 2) society rears up and kills the fuckers.

Either way, we all end up bloody, a lot of drama, and then come the speeches about how we are going to create a new society in which the past will not repeat itself.

Animal Farm is not a book. It is simple observation of repeating patterns.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[Znork]

Once they have the electronic prescedent they will consider physical mail and media ways to circumvent the 'legitimate' surveillance of the information interchange system. Expect to get it opened.

It's painful that we'll get the slide into totalitarianism in our lifetime. Perhaps it's time to stop fighting it and join up; if we rush it along we can get through the party-with-paramilitary wing stage and grind the populace under the jackboots for a dozen years, then into the total war stage in a dozen years, get a collapse and revolution and then Never Again for another fifty years.

And hey, totalitarian imagery has it's charm.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[stanlyb]

But once the train is out of rails, it is just a matter of time before the whole composition collapse, and nothing in the world could save them.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[Nefarious Wheel]

... The catch is that the USA are kind of a Central Station for cultural interchange

Was. I think the word is was .

-- Just some English-speaking foreigner

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[roman_mir]

remember that. remember who really ruined things.

- I always remember WHO really ruined the things - those who asked government for bread and circuses and told it that it could do anything as long as it delivered those things.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[Anonymous Coward]

You can derail a train or dispose of the conductor.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[TimothyDavis]

What we should probably look into is getting a constitutional amendment put into place that explicitly protects rights. Otherwise, it is only a matter of time before laws are put into place that take away our freedom.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[spottedkangaroo]

I can't help but feeling like this has already been done. Seems to me it was a couple hundred years before computers, but the meaning was clear enough.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[shentino]

And any president who would dare to veto it would be quickly impeached.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[element-o.p.]

And no mod points when I really need them. Very, very well said, sir.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[element-o.p.]

I mean, it is illegal for the government to open my mail.

And who delivers the mail for you?

Q.E.D.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[Kjella]

pressure will not stop and sooner or later, we'll lose what we have become used to. we've had some good internet days during the last decade or two; but the government AND big business have teamed up to ruin it.

Pardon me for saying it, but I've heard the doomsday prediction that the "wild wild west" days of the Internet is coming to a close now since shortly after I got on in the 90s. Double that after 9/11. P2P was going to die after Napster and torrents were going to die after Suprnova and TPB and most recently file hosting was to die with Megaupload. I don't see that any of that has happened. The music industry has given up DRM protection, the video industry is still in denial but BluRay looks to be practically broken so 1080p content will be on P2P for the foreseeable future and we still got root on our PCs and now on Android on the mobile. The world is not full of Trusted Computing and Remote Attestation to get on the Internet that was supposed to be "imminent".

Their legal campaigns have also honestly not scared many, they're consistently meeting opposition in the courts and so are all their "graduated response" aka "three strikes, you're out" laws except France who surrenders as usual. They can't significantly increase the chance of getting caught - particularly with the explosion it people file sharing - and they won't get public support for the death penalty for file sharing. It's gone beyond the point where they can effectively combat in the courts and people generally react badly to that kind of arbitrary, excessive punishment to the small minority that does get caught.

I honestly think they're losing year for year, with a population that is less and less likely to accept these restrictions. They still haven't "tamed" the first generation of online people and for each year a year of young people can vote and old people die out. It takes a long, long time - from first vote to average life span we're talking 60 years or so and we're maybe 15 years into it since Internet got "mainstream". If there was an election today in Germany the Pirate Party would enter parliament (they've already entered two state parliaments), no offense to my neighbors Sweden but that's a 8-9x bigger country and a leading force in the EU, far stronger than two MEPs in the European Parliament. Meanwhile bandwidth gets faster and cheaper, software gets smarter most bills to store traffic data has died on the drawing board.

My impression is also that more than more places are offering customary wifi service, go into any coffee shop, burger joint, pizza place, gas station, buses, trains, airports, airplanes, hotels, motels or pretty much any company office and they have a wifi for you. True, the number of open home wifis may have declined somewhat but overall I'd say your options are more not fewer. Not to mention that with faster connections even using proxies and whatnot slowing them down you still get decent speeds, the content you want is relatively constant in size. Currently I have 60/60 Mbit and in all honestly (and my inner geek screams to accept this) I'd have zero use for a 1000 Mbit line. Okay I'd have to wait a few seconds shorter on the occasions that I do wait but my total downloads would probably not go up at all.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[Anonymous Coward]

A pity they don't realize--if they don't stop the train, the peasants will derail it. It will be worse for both labor and capital.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[HiThere]

Depends on how you figure it. You could blame Abe Lincoln, or you could blame the law clerk who wrote up the decision of Union Pacific vs. The United States. Good arguments could be made in either case, and in either case they were just reinforcing trends that were already present.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[rvw]

You can only slow it down as this train is being driven by the federal government with virtually unlimited power, money, and time.. All this stuff ( and more ) will eventually pass and our digital freedom goes out the door.

Just a matter of time. Enjoy it while it lasts.

I just read an article in the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant about a 17 year old that hacked into the Netherlands biggest phone provider. He tells about two FBI officers being permanently stationed at the Dutch national cybercrime team. He tells it as if it helps the Dutch, but I'm pretty sure it will help the US more. "Our" digital freedom? Even in the EU - it's gone!

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[philip.paradis]

Use work internet because we don't pay for it

Once people start getting fired for doing that, they won't have to worry about paying for a lot of things. Also, the number of people who will actually do what you're advocating is vanishingly small compared to the population at large. You're dealing with people who genuinely don't care.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[Anonymous Coward]

So I'm guessing you are from somewhere like Norway where the concentration of money and power isn't high enough that the global elite have started turning the screws so much yet. I've got news for you pal, the list of those nice fluffy 'free' countries gets shorter every year. The pirate party is a small group of nerds pissing in front of a large rhino that isn't inconvenienced enough to pay them any attention yet. They really should have followed through with that Sealand idea, its ridiculous naiveity would have suited them perfectly.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[Anonymous Coward]

No small cadre is Unbreakable.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[Anonymous Coward]

>>>>... The catch is that the USA are kind of a Central Station for cultural interchange

> Was. I think the word is was .

> -- Just some English-speaking foreigner

Maybe you're right in the sense we need another interchange node - which leaves the question of what language to use... Esperanto?

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[Roogna]

Actually if they really looked at things, which they don't, I don't think it's good for the %1 at all to suppress freedom. By all rights the ultra wealthy that have arisen from within the "free" world are more wealthy and powerful than any dictator or tyrant of history. Freedom of the masses has only actually raised ALL classes up further. This newfound desire to push the middle classes and poor down will most likely only result in the %1 losing massive amounts of their own wealth and power as well.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't believe that the power to pass these bills is coming from the will of the government. The political will is coming from senators whom have financial stakes, i.e. they are corrupt and willing to do the bidding of a private company not the people. Certainly I agree that there is a significant risk associated with cyber crime, but really, will details of that crime be found in our emails? I think not.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[PopeRatzo]

You can only slow it down as this train is being driven by the federal government with virtually unlimited power, money, and time..

The "federal government" isn't writing these bills, the corporations are. And with the new unlimited power to influence elections, only pro-corporate candidates will hold office. These laws are written in secret, by unknown people, and passed in the dark of night.

If you look at the one thing that has changed in the past 80 years, making the government's power onerous, it has been the growing influence of corporations, not just in national elections, but at every level of government down to the school board. I only recently learned that corporate money, Citizens United-style, is not being put into school board elections in parts of the US.

You can limit the power of government all you want, and it's not going to change a thing. We'll just end up dealing with private police, accountable to no one but unelected (and unelectable) corporate entities. You have to know your enemy, and the enemy is the corporatist.

My theory is easily testable: pass public funding of elections, amend the constitution to change "person" to "natural person". Codify "corporations are not people" and "money is not speech" and I believe we'd go a long way toward rolling back the most onerous aspects of what is currently being called the "too-powerful government".

You know, we could also make a huge difference if we just started showing up, in numbers too big to hide in "free speech zones", and started scaring the shit out of the people who are elected.

It's impossible to scare a corporations when we're not even customers of many of the most powerful corporations. But it's relatively easy to scare an elected official, just by showing up. Not signing online petitions. Not blogging about it. Not forwarding angry emails, but by getting up, getting out of the house and go stand in front of the buildings where these politicians do their business.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[Thing 1]

Okay I'd have to wait a few seconds shorter on the occasions that I do wait but my total downloads would probably not go up at all.

Exactly: there is a limit to the speed at which you can consume it. Granted, there may be an "initial hoarding experience" but after you've spent a few thousand on hard drives that keep dying, you'll realize that it mostly makes sense to hoard at the rate at which you can realistically consume (and also, evaluate and discard -- hoarding has its price as well).

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[c0lo]

I postulate that money reify power. That all humanity story is centred around power.
Therefore we have not created the world that way neither did ours ancestors.
Neither did the inventor of money.

A postulate at least as old as 1170 (as captured by Carmina Burana)

About greed

The hands that bring gifts
Makes the virtuous into wicked.
Money build alliances,
Money give counsel, (/influence the outcome of a judgement)
Money smooth the difficulties,
Money sedate the fights,

money given to those in authority
satiates the justice.
money delivers your place
to you, the ones who judge

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[Anonymous Coward]

we could also make a huge difference if we just started showing up, in numbers too big to hide in "free speech zones", and started scaring the shit out of the people who are elected.

It's impossible to scare a corporations when we're not even customers of many of the most powerful corporations. But it's relatively easy to scare an elected official, just by showing up. Not signing online petitions. Not blogging about it. Not forwarding angry emails, but by getting up, getting out of the house and go stand in front of the buildings where these politicians do their business.

Everyone with the temerity to do what you're suggesting will be arrested for "causing a disturbance" or "blocking a public sidewalk" or some nonsense, beaten bloody, and strip-searched.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called the US CONSTITUTION.
with it we prosper.
without it we die.

with the US CONSTITUTION
DHS has to be deactivated.
Banksters and their official enablers go to jail.
TSA goes back into the private airlines hole.
Spying needs a court order.
War undeclared is ended.
The Monetary System gets regulated again.
ALL the three letter agencies get reigned in.

side effects:
Business who turn profit and no longer have to fear the unpredictable next 10 year 25 year future, just expand and hire, not worrying about the law changing every 4 days. No wonder they don't hire, why would you hire with the laws changing every 4 days, or with officials who enable the banksters fucking dipping into customer accounts!?

As unpredictability goes away, slowly trust returns as law is only the minimal amount of law, and equally not some intermittent bullshit. Plain English, so we don't need to hire translaters (lawyers.)

  No more, "Sometimes you have a US Constitution, & sometimes you don't" ,

I can go on but the gayfags will tl;dr me.

The alternative is chaos, treason, theft, pain, suffering, cancer, bills, slavery, prisons, fema camps, 450 million rounds of hollow points vs the pitchfork, lies, death, war, nukes, destruction.

Have you served your country and sworn an oath? I HAVE!

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[shiftless]

You can only slow it down

Exactly....which is why this legislation is pointless. The wheels of freedom are already turning world-wide.

Armies cannot stop an idea whose time has come.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[mcneely.mike]

Via slashdot!/twitter/facebook/??? just let it be passed around that ANY business that supports it -->>doesn't support rejecting it will find their customers going to the competition...
...and ANY politician that votes for it will not get votes.
then the list needs to be passed around (via slashdot!/twitter/facebook/??? of the companies and polititians that support (passively or aggressively) the stupidity.

politicians DO care about votes, and business DOES care about money.
maybe the train CAN be stopped. ???

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[marcosdumay]

Freedom is not good for the 1%.

Freedom is only bad for the elite when they are decadent. While the elite is ascending, it is quite good for them.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[homer_ca]

And to further abuse the train metaphor...
the gravy train for the bread and circuses, i.e. the plunder of the rest of the planet, is quickly running out. But really don't mind me, just go back to your TV and cheez doodles. I'm sure that next shiny thing will make you feel all better.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[CodeBuster]

You can only slow it down as this train is being driven by the federal government with virtually unlimited power, money, and time.. All this stuff ( and more ) will eventually pass and our digital freedom goes out the door.

And yet for all it's great power and resources the federal government, like all governments, is a complex, inefficient and incompetent bureaucracy. They've made their laws and imposed their restrictions, now let them try and enforce them. History suggests that they will, at best, be only partially successful. Meanwhile, the federal government, with it's massive debts, wars and the looming entitlements crisis, will soon tire of playing rent-a-cop to Hollywood and the copyright cartels.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[phantomfive]

Exactly. The only reason the content industry can push this through is because they keep trying, and the rest of us (who rallied against SOPA) eventually give up and don't care.

You need to push back every time. Because they have the right to keep pushing their opinion, like anyone else.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[Anonymous Coward]

OK. The question then becomes: Whom do we shoot?

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[hemo_jr]

Ultimately, a constitutional amendment may be needed.

"Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of access to the Internet as a whole or in part, nor abridging freedom of site creation or inclusion in a naming scheme. The right of the people to secure their personal information, physical and non-physical correspondence and Internet traffic from unreasonable search shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the data to be accessed and copied. No data nor files shall be removed from computer or hindered from Internet access without due process of law establishing reasonable certainty that the particular data is wholly detrimental to society. Nor shall enforcement of any kind be delegated to private corporations or individuals."

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[anomaly256]

I wonder.. how about everyone who would class themselves as a consumer and victim in such contexts band together, form a 'corporation of the people', pool their money and begin lobbying themselves

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[anomaly256]

We might not have a country any more but we can have a corporation, which is apparently more powerful these days anyway. If you can't beat them, join them? :P

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[PopeRatzo]

Everyone with the temerity to do what you're suggesting will be arrested for "causing a disturbance" or "blocking a public sidewalk" or some nonsense, beaten bloody, and strip-searched.

I guess we'll see in the coming weeks, starting tomorrow, considering the number of Occupy folks that are starting to gather here in Chicago. There's a big deal going on down in Grant Park tomorrow I think, to kick off the several week-long protest, which includes a visit to the NATO Summit being held at McCormick Place.

If I get arrested, beaten bloody and strip-searched, I'll let everyone know, don't worry. As Lou Costello used to say, "I got a BIG MOUTH, Abbot!"

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[russotto]

Armies cannot stop an idea whose time has come.

You mean freedom? It's time has come... and gone. It got started during the enlightenment, had its heyday in the 19th century, battled totalitarianism in the 20th... and having apparently beat it, collapsed like a bee colony early in the 21st. It appears a kindler and gentler authoritarianism is the best we can hope for. Those world-wide wheels of "freedom" you refer to are actually the wheels of Islamic theocratic totalitarianism, one of the poorer outcomes.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[catchblue22]

agreed, its only a matter of 'which year' is the actual death of the free internet

Many people make statements like this like they are forecasting the weather, as if this is just something that is "happening" to us, something that is completely out of our control. In fact, we have the true power in society. When we realize it. When we choose to use it.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[Anonymous Coward]

Yup, and even if they can't slip it past the public eye, all they need to do is attach it as a rider to the We Love America And The Troops And Kittens Act Of 2013 and it'll pass unanimously.

Everyone really needs to stop making excuses for this stuff and suggesting it will pass. There is no excuse, any attempt to pass such a thing is treason and should be treated as such in respect to all parties affiliated.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[Anonymous Coward]

remember that. remember who really ruined things.

darknets will be the only thing left for truly freedom-based communications.

what a world we have created; or allowed to grow in this direction. so sad that 'money and power is all that matters'.

Stop being such whiny little b*tches that blame others for your failings. We still have the second amendment, politicians know we have it, they also know we are too pussified to make use of it. When that changes the laws will change - this is our god damned country, not the fat sucking politicians - they don't work for us because they want to, they work for us because they have to.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[rtb61]

1% of human society are also psychopaths infallibly detectable at an early age by testing brain wave reactions due to modern science. So repeating patterns can be broken through the application of modern science. Quite simply psychopaths need to be forbidden from gaining positions of control, governance or influence and, the behaviour extremely constrained. Quite simply problem over.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[FutureDomain]

Actually if they really looked at things, which they don't, I don't think it's good for the %1 at all to suppress freedom.

It all depends on how they got their money and power. If they got it by producing the best things that people want, then it's not good for them. But if they got their money by regulating away their competitors, enriching themselves through subsidies, or empowering themselves through controlled media then it's in their best interests to restrict freedom. Allowing Internet freedom could threaten their guaranteed profits (by circumventing restrictive copyrights and patents) or threaten their power to influence people (by allowing the free flow of information). That's why they keep trying to pass these bills. Instead of trying to innovate their way to more profits, they turn to forcing people either directly or indirectly to give them more profits through government action.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[Goocifer]

Relevant:

http://thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=pass_sopa

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[TimothyDavis]

I admit to being ignorant, so please do share where in the U.S. constitution this is covered.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[edb]

Unrelated amendments should not be allowed to be attached to any proposed legislation. This kind of nonsense is and always has been an abuse of the system, and has been exploited by both parties forever.

Congress could very easily amend its rules to prohibit unrelated riders to legislation. But since congress-critters are the very animals that benefit from the hidden sleight-of-hand, it's unlikely they would take this course on their own.

We can't even get this done in California, where the Initiative Process lets anything get on the ballot. How can we possibly get this idea passed at the Federal level?

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[VortexCortex]

Careful with your psychopath detector. I'd wager my life that they would become as unmaintained, inaccurate and yet unquestionable as today's breathalysers (which detect gasoline fumes as intoxication, and most register clean air samples as containing alcohol due to build up in their unmaintained and uncallibrated lasing chambers).

Go ahead, angle an educated question of doubt as to the breathalyser accuracy in court. I dare you. You'll wind up in contempt.

Let a nebulous "mind scan" dictate our fates and I assure you that the psychopaths will be "gaining positions of control, governance or influence" in ways your small mind daren't conceive.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[VortexCortex]

I always remember WHO really ruined the things

What's this? A conspiracy I've not heard of? Inconceivable!
Damn it man, Elaborate! What's the World Health Organisation's angle?!

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[VortexCortex]

It's called the US CONSTITUTION.

Unfortunately, the powers that be regard the US Constitution with the same respect as their Morning Constitutions.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[rtb61]

There is of course the second psychopath detector, those that come to the defence of psychopaths, it's more of a trap though.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[martin-boundary]

While I'm not disagreeing with your main points, total downloads have gone up a lot in the last 10 years or so. An average web page is now about 10x bigger than it used to be, which is quite depressing as it's not like there's 10x more content. Your average movie clip is getting to be HD now, which again isn't actually a lot more content, just an improvement in detail, etc. The content side of the net is taking the same bloated direction that the software side of Windows has taken forever.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[Anonymous Coward]

Anything created by man, can be destroyed by man... even its own government.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[0111 1110]

Well there's the the ninth amendment, but that's obviously ignored by pretty much everyone, lest we have some kind of apocalyptic tsunami of freedom.

It would be awfully nice if we could enumerate every human right: a free internet, freedom to travel by means which did not exist in the 18th century, and lots of other human rights which the constitution does not explicitly enumerate, relying on the ninth amendment to make it clear that the constitution should not be interpreted as a list of all the things the government can't do, but rather as a list of all the things it can do. If it isn't explicitly mentioned in the constitution it's supposed to mean that the government doesn't have that power. Rather than it being a privilege bestowed on us by our generous government overlords. Presumably we are supposed to feel lucky that we are allowed to travel by horseless carriage or mechanical flying machine at all. Or communicate freely via electrical impulses across wires or via electromagnetic waves through the air.

When everything is a privilege bestowed on us by our government, it is quite easy for such a government to simply revoke any or all of those whenever it wishes. This is why the concept of human rights exists in the first place. It's a recognition that those in power will always seek to wield that power in whatever way they believe is in their best interests.

Too many Americans believe that their only human rights are those enumerated in the bill of rights, but that simply isn't the case. The founders never intended it as an exhaustive list of every right. For instance they didn't include the right to breathe or eat or drink or sleep without government interference. Presumably because they couldn't imagine a government tyrannical enough to try to interfere with those things. An unfortunate failure on their part.

They should have taken the long view and assumed that things would be created by man which they couldn't even imagine at the time and that the government should be at least asked nicely to keep its greedy, grubby paws of those things as well. There were some who had the foresight to realize that the bill of rights might give the impression that those were the only rights citizens of their new republic would have. Not that it would have helped to have excluded the bill of rights. The government would simply have claimed that since it isn't explicitly forbidden, they are free to do whatever they wish. No matter what the constitution was always just a piece of paper. No piece of paper has ever stopped those hungry for power and control from taking whatever steps necessary to insure it. In our history all branches of the government were in agreement that a literal interpretation of the constitution would leave them impotent and grant too much power to the citizenry. In retrospect it really was quite naive of the founders to expect the government to interpret their document in such a way. All they had to do was pretend the ninth amendment didn't exist and that is precisely what they did. Perhaps they should have had another amendment that stated, "DO NOT IGNORE THE 9TH AMENDMENT!", but they would have just ignored that amendment as well.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[jez9999]

Where's my circus? Marijuana is illegal.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[jez9999]

We can't even get this done in California, where the Initiative Process lets anything get on the ballot. How can we possibly get this idea passed at the Federal level?

Judge Dredd?

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[blind biker]

Freedom is not good for the 1%. They have gone by different names in the past of course. It is a cycle. The 1% grows through abuse after abuse, and gradual poolings of influence and resources.

Eventually they will push it too far and either 1) vastly lower their own standards of living by taking out society with it, at which time they tend to migrate somewhere else (like a virus) or 2) society rears up and kills the fuckers.

Either way, we all end up bloody, a lot of drama, and then come the speeches about how we are going to create a new society in which the past will not repeat itself.

Animal Farm is not a book. It is simple observation of repeating patterns.

The reason why you get new douchebags to be in power after every revolution, is because cheating, lying and manipulating gives you a tremendous advantage when swimming in the murky waters of chaos and change (and society in general). Inevitably, the people in power will be a new or the old crop of psychopaths.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[roman_mir]

You are a minority. The type of bread and circuses that wins is the type that is aimed at the lowest common denominator.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[Anonymous Coward]

>The way is to make a law saying the oppposite, a guarantee of privacy bill.

Why think small? Why not go for Constitutional Ammendment?

This bill, that bill will chip away. And then you have the end run around 'em - Corporations who can and will do the same.

So pay $99 from Cobert SuperPAC, make a PAC for Constitutional ammendments, support things like this privacy + oh say MJ and whatever other things offend ya then as head of the PAC spend the money going about the nation glad handing for more money.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[warrax_666]

1% of human society are also psychopaths infallibly detectable at an early age by testing brain wave reactions

This is untrue -- there is no such thing as an infallible test of psychopathy. Not only is it known that children can "grow out of it" even when they show clear signs of psychopathy in childhood, it is also known that adults with "psychopathic brains" can be perfectly normally functioning. (Current thinking seems to be that a combination of genetic factors and environmental factors both need to be present for psychopathy to develop.)

Even a test which is 99.99% accurate can be extremely dangerous if applied to the general population when the condition is rare in the first place. See e.g. this TED talk for a good overview. This is why screening of the general population is a very bad idea in most cases.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[Anonymous Coward]

Will it be called the great firewall of the USA?

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[zblack_eagle]

As a foreigner, I may just be talking out of my arse here, but perhaps a constitutional amendment is in order?

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[spyfrog]

I am sorry to report this but the Pirate Party did a terrible election to parliament last time. Most things point to that they will loose and not repeat the success in the EU election either - the ordinary parties have learned and now never has any copyright or Internet controversial laws passed during election times.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[Jawnn]

You can only slow it down as this train is being driven by those members of the federal government who have been bought and paid for by corporate interests with virtually unlimited power, money, and time.. All this stuff ( and more ) will eventually pass and our digital freedom goes out the door.

Just a matter of time. Enjoy it while it lasts.

TFTFY.
You don't seriously believe all that "big bad gubbamint is evil" bullshit, do you?

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[Anonymous Coward]

The bill of rights. Unless you're referring specifically to preserving informational freedom or digital.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[nu1x]

You are not insightful, but rather, submissive.

Enjoy being anally raped, o submissive one.

Enjoy being exploited by your gods, oh I mean, your government. Because you cannot, absolutely cannot, sacrifice an ounce of your fat to destroy and remake your government, for you would experience pain and discomfort, and those things have gone out of fashion since forever !

"virtually unlimited power, money, and time" bullshit.

Your government ain't no gods man.

It is you who became weak and complacent, and you mind has grown weak and averse to change and discomfort.

And for that, you will pay later in life.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[Grumbleduke]

As a foreigner from a country with no (written/codified) constitution, but still manages to avoid the issues of unrelated amendments, I think a simpler solution is required. Making doing so recognised and unacceptable and something that is just "not done". Unfortunately this seems to involve either a long history of it not being done (i.e. tradition), or a majority of Parliamentarians willing to consistently vote down any and all unrelated amendments.

A constitutional amendment would be problematic as it would be hard to define "unrelated." You might just end up with politicians trying to find any excuse for linking their amendment to the bill.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[Anonymous Coward]

Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom.

You might not be able to stop a moving train by standing in front of it, but with a bit of work on the tracks or the switches you can manage to derail it.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[mhajicek]

Very much like they find any excuse to link everything to interstate commerce to circumvent the tenth amendment.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[lsatenstein]

You can only slow it down as this train is being driven by the federal government with virtually unlimited power, money, and time.. All this stuff ( and more ) will eventually pass and our digital freedom goes out the door.

Just a matter of time. Enjoy it while it lasts.

Clandistinely, I suspect it has already happended CISPA needs SOPA to justify it's actions. My fear is that if they can pry, they can implant and bear false witness.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[Anonymous Coward]

It was Southern Pacific railroad vs Santa Clara County (1886) as written by the clerk that has been interpreted as granting corporations "personhood" (i.e, extending the 14th amendment to corporations).

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[Anonymous Coward]

It is always Rome's fault isn't it?

Just their circuses were a lot more bloody.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[Anonymous Coward]

Their legal campaigns have also honestly not scared many, they're consistently meeting opposition in the courts and so are all their "graduated response" aka "three strikes, you're out" laws except France who surrenders as usual.

Well thank you for that... I'm French, and kind of ashamed of this.
However, it has to be said that this has been introduced by Sarkozy (which is literally the best friend of most music/movies lobbies here). Almost all presidential candidates right now are proposing a global license instead: making content sharing/downloading legal and getting say, 3 euros from all internet connections to pay the artists. The notable exception is - once again - Sarkozy, which is proposing a new three-strike laws taking into account streaming & direct download websites (which is frightening considering the DPI they'd have to do to implement that).

Another fun fact is that Hollande (the main leftist candidate, and the one most likely to win the election) was saying he was in favor of such a global license a few months ago and is now being very vague on it, saying there needs to be "discussion with all the actors" and "reflections" on the three strike laws and "illegal" downloading in general. I believe he's doing that so as not to hurt his election due to lobbies and the like (similarly to the fact that he was in favor of legalizing marijuana a few months ago and is now simply saying there needs to be a "serious reconsideration" of the law), and am hopeful he'll actually implement such a scheme in the end. Time will tell.

In any case, I sure hope Sarkozy is out of the way after the upcoming elections (two weeks from now) - it looks like it but you never know, and if that guy is re-elected, this time I believe I'll go live somewhere else (enough is enough).

Finally, and a little off-topic: the way America is going right now is truly frightening for us. You guys are obviously going towards a totalitarian state very very fast. It would be funny if not for the fact that there are tens of thousands - if not more - who will suffer there (and are probably suffering right now) because of this, and also for the fact that you guys have the strongest military force on earth. The huge deprivation of liberties, stuff like torture being allowed or the massive money swallowing black hole that is the TSA, or even the fact that a candidate such as Santorum (which is completely batshit crazy from most European's POV) is apparently managing to actually have support of part of the population in the US, all of this is very frightening indeed.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you kidding? Such presidents are never registered for elections in the first place. It's the big people who make history, but it's the small people who write it down.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[HiThere]

Thanks. For some reason (hah!) I've been have trouble finding that reference.

Re:Cant stop a moving train

[JThundley]

You may be interested in the One Subject At A Time Act. Please spread the word.

First...

[Anonymous Coward]

CISPA sucks and thata sucks!

Only restrict, never grant.

[__aawavt7683]

"This is SOPA being passed in smaller chunks."

So long as all law is made solely to restrict people and _never_to recagnize rights or prevent abuses such as this, it will just be attempt after attempt until a given law passes. It is absolutely inevitable.

Congress must enact law that supercedes any prior or later law indicating that personal communications CANNOT be intercepted with anything short of a court order. This, for the various things that are trying to be passed now. Only when they have to fight for the revokation of these protective laws before they can bribe their desired laws into affect will we be in any way safe.

But it'll never happen.

Re:Only restrict, never grant.

[HairyNevus]

Congress must enact law that supercedes any prior or later law indicating that personal communications CANNOT be intercepted with anything short of a court order.

We wish. Too bad the checks and balances system doesn't include a way for the people to have a say in what lawmakers do...oh wait -- voting! Damn it, that was our "balance"? Too bad the ineffectiveness of that wasn't foreseen. 'Course it would have taken foreseeing 21st century news networks and an amalgamation of other influences to politics to understand how voting being the only power "We The People" wield falls short.

...I guess we still have protests (lol).

Re:Only restrict, never grant.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you say this? Historically it is inaccurate. If you really care then get involved, vote for people who have morals and ethics, quit letting the media tell you who's worth voting for and who isn't. Stop being a sheep. Help get legislation in place to stop bills like this. Beat them to the punch, or lay down and give up.

Re:Only restrict, never grant.

[SomePgmr]

Perhaps we can agree that voting works fine... it's the people doing the voting that are fucking broken.

"Oprah says you're a good person if you vote this way!", and "Glenn Beck says you're an enemy of the state unless you vote this way!", wouldn't matter much if people weren't so lazy and uninterested as to reduce national politics to a stupid sporting event.

Re:Only restrict, never grant.

[RussR42]

I'm not sure if I can agree with that... How often do you hear "I'm voting for x so that y doesn't win" or that voting 3rd party is a waste of your vote? Voting to choose between two candidates that will do the same thing doesn't really "work fine."

Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!

Re:Only restrict, never grant.

[Charliemopps]

That's just silly. You have NO options when you vote in our 2 party system. Glen Beck and Oprah serve to focus your attention on non-issues, get your riled up about them so you'll participate in a completely meaningless process. The 2 parties have the entire system fixed so that no 3rd party can get involved in any way. They'd have you believe the most important topics of the day are completely pointless issues that no-one can do anything about, like "Jobs" There isn't a president in history that's "created" a Job. Who can we vote for that wont raise our taxes to even more ridiculous heights? Who can we vote for that wont invade yet another 3rd world country? Who can we vote for that wont have a whose-who of special interest groups visiting their office daily? The only special interest group they should be listening to is the constituency that elected them to office.

If you're voting for Republicans or Democrats, YOU are the problem.

Re:Only restrict, never grant.

[tbird81]

As a non-American, I always wonder how I'd vote.

You've got one party full of fundamentalist Christians wanting to control how other people live their lives. On the other side you've got a bunch of pretend-Christians, who'll let media companies get whatever they want, maintain wars, spend money bailing out big-business, and doing the same as a other team except spending more money in the process.

If I only had the choice between those two, I'd vote Dems (because they seem slightly less religious). But I'd vote for a third party.

It may seem like a wasted vote, but the real wasted votes are for the Democrats or Republicans - doesn't matter which you chose, it's a waste.

Re:Only restrict, never grant.

[SomePgmr]

I suspect we feel about the same on it. I'm aggravated by the situation as it is, but it seems like something that wouldn't be broken if you could count on the voters to act more rationally.

Though I agree, you can't. So I guess I'll concede that the system itself is broken, if only in that it relies on people making decisions that are in their own best interest.

Unfortunately, even that leaves us with, "What better alternative exists that wouldn't also rely on people making good decisions?" Assuming, of course, you don't believe "benevolent dictatorships" to be an appropriate solution.

Re:Only restrict, never grant.

[Anonymous Coward]

The ineffectiveness of voting was foreseen. Why do you think the founders added the second amendment? Was it to protect merely against external threat?

Re:Only restrict, never grant.

[SomePgmr]

Again, that sounds like a deficiency with the voters, not the voting bit of checks and balances.

Re:Only restrict, never grant.

[RussR42]

Ahrg. You are correct*. I was thinking more that there may be better ways to design the voting system, but even with the present method those two choices were still picked by voters in the first place. And I would agree that we can still save it all bloodlessly and within the current government system if enough people pay attention.

Re:Only restrict, never grant.

[dkleinsc]

There isn't a president in history that's "created" a Job.

You're mostly right, except for this part. Any time a president pushes through a bill that boosts either direct or indirect federal hiring, he creates a job. For instance, when Franklin Roosevelt created the CCC, he most definitely created jobs. When Ronald Reagan put significant cash into missile defense, even though nothing worked it still created jobs.

Re:Only restrict, never grant.

[Thing 1]

Who can we vote for that wont invade yet another 3rd world country?

While I agree with everything else you wrote, and also the fact that we attack other sovereign nations, I take exception with "3rd world country". I've met and married some people from the third world, and they have brains just like the rest of us; they learn mathematics just like the rest of us; and they have hopes, fears, dreams, and tears like the rest of us. It's the US government (and actors within the US, perhaps not completely the gov) that created the labels "first world" and "third world" (I find it odd that we rarely talk about a "second world").

I feel that just the existence of those labels causes us to communicate using those labels, and it is almost a racist style of communication that results, without us really realizing it.

Re:Only restrict, never grant.

[c0lo]

"This is SOPA being passed in smaller chunks."

So long as all law is made solely to restrict people and _never_to recagnize rights or prevent abuses such as this, it will just be attempt after attempt until a given law passes. It is absolutely inevitable.

The very reason the people should use whatever legal influence they have to show support in delaying (if not stopping) such laws, every time they try to pass them:
petition at Electronic Frontier Foundation
petition at avaaz

It may appear that you also missed the boat in signing a petition on "We the people" (I can't, not being in US). Maybe it's time to start a new one and promote it better?

Re:Only restrict, never grant.

[Qzukk]

wouldn't matter much if people weren't so lazy and uninterested as to reduce national politics to a stupid sporting event.

Hey now, we work hard to make sure the guy who will vote the right way on abortion makes it into office. Freedoms? Wars? Deficits? That's all unimportant crap.

Re:Only restrict, never grant.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dont worry, their political system is coming to you. Its what they do.

Re:Only restrict, never grant.

[shiftless]

I wore my Ron Paul shirt to McDonalds today. One guy asked me, "Who is Ron Paul?" I thought he was fucking with me, but he genuinely didn't know.

Re:Only restrict, never grant.

[shiftless]

(I find it odd that we rarely talk about a "second world").

That's because the Second World aka the USSR collapsed 20 years ago.

Re:Only restrict, never grant.

[Anonymous Coward]

> Yeah, there are SOME people who think that homosexuality should be illegal. Well good luck with that. They are a tiny minority. I think it's immoral but even I don't think it should be illegal.

God: These things satirise themselves...
*sardonic laughter echoes throughout the heavens*

Re:Only restrict, never grant.

[element-o.p.]

Yeah, that's what we need -- a law that protects our rights. Maybe something like this:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

That should handle the right to communicate...now for the part outlawing intercepting communications...how about something like...:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

Yeah...that should do it. Now, everyone petition your congress-critters to pass some kind of law like that!

Re:Only restrict, never grant.

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guided_democracy

Re:Only restrict, never grant.

[0111 1110]

If you want to make the semantic/linguistic argument that "third world" is a pejorative term then just go ahead and do so. I am all ears. I use the term and do not consider it even slightly pejorative. It just denotes a country without basic infrastructure that first world countries take for granted. Things like clean water, hospitals and a high standard of medical care including those expensive machines that go 'bing', a communications network, a system for collecting garbage more elaborate than people just burning it in their yard, schools and universities that actually teach non-trivial subjects, and average wages more than, say, $50 a month.

I have lived in quite a few third world countries, and I think of as "third world". If you feel that "developing world" is somehow more polite then, again, go ahead and make that argument. Maybe you are right, but you haven't offered any evidence. If you can offer some evidence for its offensiveness then I would certainly consider no longer using the term.

Re:Only restrict, never grant.

[0111 1110]

I'm a Libertarian. So I don't have a horse in the Democrat vs. Republican race. But there really is a large group of Republicans which for decades has been known as the "religious right". At least since the sixties. In fact it is probably the dominant segment of the Republican party. Religion plays a strong but implicit role in many of their ideas. Democrats are still generally Christians, but they are less likely to take it seriously, and aren't generally interested in passing laws motivated by tenets of their religious beliefs. So I think the OP was mostly correct in his analysis. Religious motivation is probably one of the few real differences between the Republican and Democratic parties these days.

It used to be that Democrats were known for supporting personal freedoms of the kind that the ACLU are known to fight for, but unfortunately the party seems to have moved past all that now, fully embracing the true goodness of the government in every aspect of our lives.

It used to be that Republicans were concerned with financial freedoms: taxes and business regulation and relatively free market economics, but didn't particularly care about personal freedoms, like the freedom not to be pulled from your house, beaten half to death, and thrown in jail on false charges by the police, who, in their view are inherently pure and can do no wrong.

In general the modern Republican party cares even less about personal freedoms, like the right to continue breathing, or not to be falsely imprisoned, or even murdered without a trial, than it used to, and they have even backed off a bit on the idea of financial freedom as well. No one wins elections these days by promising liberty of any sort. It just isn't popular anymore.

Honestly, I'm not even sure what Democrats want anymore. It seems like they have gotten a lot of what they wanted in the economic realm. In terms of personal freedom, well, that's a real mystery to me. I'm not sure they have any horse in that race at all anymore. Almost as if the Democratic party is solely an economic platform now. More taxes and more social services maybe? But not too much because that would make them socialists and that would be too extreme and philosophical for them. Too much of a strain on the brain. God forbid either Democrats or Republicans had to think for themselves. That's far too much work.

Neither party really thinks in terms of ideas or fundamental philosophy. There is never any discussion of principles like ethics or human rights. Of course when the religious right thinks of 'ethics' they think of the bible. Of things like commandments from a supernatural being.

Both groups are pragmatists through and through. Focusing only on narrow issues or pragmatically band-aiding various social problems with knee jerk solutions that even a child should realize will be full of unintended consequences. Or secret intended ones driven by corporate bribes.

Re:Only restrict, never grant.

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it's immoral but even I don't think it should be illegal

Well, that's very big hearted and generous of you. the gay community will erect a statue in your honour no doubt.

Re:Only restrict, never grant.

[dryeo]

Originally the terms were first world for those allied with the west, mostly N. America and Western Europe. Second world for those aligned with the east, mostly Eastern Europe, a good chunk of Asia and a few scattered places like Cuba. The third world was everyone else. As third world nations were typically poor and undeveloped the term came to mean poor and undeveloped or just starting to develop. Nothing derogatory in the labeling, at least originally.

Re:Only restrict, never grant.

[Anonymous Coward]

(I find it odd that we rarely talk about a "second world").

That's because the Second World aka the USSR collapsed 20 years ago.

The "Second World" is the "New World". I can't believe that people don't know this.

Re:Only restrict, never grant.

[gottabeme]

One of the things I'm tired of is the false dichotomy presented, implying that not endorsing a behavior is the same as being intolerant of it. How much more explicitly tolerant can one be than to say that a behavior should be allowed and legal?

The real bigots are the ones who are not tolerant of those they perceive as intolerant.

Re:Only restrict, never grant.

[gottabeme]

Haha, awesome: express a moral opinion and get modded Troll. Well, duh, this is Slashdot, where nothing is wrong except patents, copyrights, and Microsoft (and I'm against all three).

Re:Only restrict, never grant.

[gottabeme]

Thanks for actually posting something thoughtful, unlike the other, actual trolls. I probably lean Libertarian, but I hesitate to generalize my opinions enough to identify fully with any party, regardless of who I may vote for. Really, we need less bandwagoneering and more thoughtfulness and deliberation.

Sadly, principles are indeed lacking from today's politics. I wonder if they'll ever return.

As an aside, your slight against Christians did not go unnoticed. In contrast, even though I expressed disagreement with homosexuals, I didn't ridicule them. Again, a great example of hypocrisy is the incivility of those who demand civility toward themselves. Freedom is not enough for some people--they want others to agree with them, as well, which takes away others' freedom.

Finally, without religion, there is no fundamental basis for an ethics other than pragmatism--and such pragamatism is simply individualistic, so it's not really ethics at all.

Re:Only restrict, never grant.

[Anonymous Coward]

The first world: Anyone on the US' side in the cold war.

The second world: Anyone on the USSR's side in the cold war.

The third world: Everyone else.

Re:Only restrict, never grant.

[Charliemopps]

Jobs that are paid for by tax money are not jobs. It's like a snake eating its own tail. It helps the individuals that got hired but is a net loss for society as a whole.

Re:Only restrict, never grant.

[justthinkit]

Things like clean water
.

65% is fluoridated, so NO.

, hospitals and a high standard of medical care including those expensive machines that go 'bing'

Unaffordable for most of us, so NO.

, a communications network

Hmmm, Big Brother-like system, bandwith caps, fired if you use it, sued if you use it, so NO.

, a system for collecting garbage more elaborate than people just burning it in their yard

We lack such a system, unless you are talking about the private companies that haul away crap if we pay them (just as they would do in any other country), so NO.

, schools and universities that actually teach non-trivial subjects

Definite NO.

, and average wages more than, say, $50 a month.

Well, given that Internet + TV + telephone costs $150 a month, perhaps we should be making a NET income comparison, in which case we lose due to no one being able to save any money and all of us having record amounts of debt, so NO again.

Looks like the U.S. qualifies as a third world country now.

Re:Only restrict, never grant.

[Xerolooper]

"...one party full of fundamentalist Christians wanting to control how other people live their lives. On the other side you've got a bunch of pretend-Christians, who'll let media companies get whatever they want..."

And that's just the Democrats you never even mentioned the Republicans. All kidding aside you seem to be buying into a lot of the hype the parties here spew out. I would say it is more like The Republican party members are looking out for personal interest and the Democrats are looking out for personal interest. Then the party leadership and candidates of both parties are looking out for personal interest which just so happens to mean corporate interests since that pays best. The great experiment in the United States was to limit government so people could live their lives without harassment. What we are seeing is the inevitable failure of said experiment. The question we have to ask ourselves is was it any better than other forms of government. So when we rebuild will we keep certain aspects of it or not.

Re:Only restrict, never grant.

[Anonymous Coward]

"As a non-American, I always wonder how I'd vote."

You are so full of it. As myself a non-America, I also wonder who to vote ..in my own country. Because it's the same fascist, theatrical system everywhere.

Conflicted

[zugmeister]

On one hand I want to scream at your horrible cynicism and condemn your point of view. On the other hand I think you're completely correct.

Pass STFU

[Anonymous Coward]

I wish they would pass a bill called STFU (Stop Trying To Fuckup the Unternet).

End of the cloud

[xtal]

Laws like this are the defacto end of cloud computing if you have an obligation to protect your data.

Or rather.. and end to it in the USA.

Next up; crypto is for terrorists and child pornographers!

Re:End of the cloud

[Anonymous Coward]

Next up; crypto is for terrorists and child pornographers!

Bout time someone brought this up! Crypto needs to be taken out so people can't continue peddling smut and evil plans pla---
Oh you were being sarcastic.

Re:End of the cloud

[Anonymous Coward]

Next up; crypto is for terrorists and child pornographers!

This is old news and even has a label:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Horsemen_of_the_Infocalypse

Re:End of the cloud

[Teun]

I'm using OwnCloud, a nice little KDE project that through WebDav even works on Windows and I'm sure my data stays out of the US or any other government controlled server.

Re:End of the cloud

[nzac]

Seriously? the project is neither little or KDE, it's has first-class multi platform support. I'm guessing you mean it has a QT client with KDE integration.

Re:End of the cloud

[marcosdumay]

That page needs to explain what the hell the software does. And should do that in big letters, at the page you linked, not after you click a button.

Really, I've tried to discover, and all I can say is that it does file and photo synchronization with your phone. I'm not even sure if it does something else.

Re:End of the cloud

[upuv]

You are correct. All that is going to happen is companies are going to pick up and move off shore. Taking the cash and the IP with them. Basically moving out of US jurisdiction.

To be honest a lot of companies are not looking at the US as a must have for a user base anymore. They are looking at Asia and Europe. Population bases that far exceed the US. The cash side of the equation also makes Asia look very attractive.

The challenge companies will have is to make sure that data is created and housed out side of US jurisdiction. That's not so easy as still to this day most of the traffic routes through the US.

Re:End of the cloud

[Teun]

You are right and so am I :)

It was originally from a KDE developer but is otherwise platform-agnostic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OwnCloud

Re:End of the cloud

[triskaidekaphile]

"Law enforcement is in unanimous agreement that the widespread use of robust non-key recovery encryption ultimately will devastate our ability to fight crime and prevent terrorism. Uncrackable encryption will allow drug lords, spies, terrorists and even violent gangs to communicate about their crimes and their conspiracies with impunity. We will lose one of the few remaining vulnerabilities of the worst criminals and terrorists upon which law enforcement depends to successfully investigate and often prevent the worst crimes. For this reason, the law enforcement community is unanimous in calling for a balanced solution to this problem."

-Louis Freeh, FBI Director, 1997

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_in_the_United_States

how to stop this

[currently_awake]

1- get 10,000 people together. 2- they agree to vote as a block. 3- tell congress critter pass this law and you get the votes. money isn't the only way to win, you can get the same results with voting blocks.

Re:how to stop this

[SuricouRaven]

But money can be turned into TV, radio and other advertising, which can buy many more than 10,000 votes.

Re:how to stop this

[shentino]

Not to mention sabotage one's enemies.

Don't be deluded into thinking that the media is all carrots for the powerful. If need be, it will use sticks too.

Re:how to stop this

[marcosdumay]

On a zero sum game (like elections) carrots and sticks are the same thing.

Of course

[dbet]

The oligarchies of the world do a fair job of controlling media, but they can't control blogs or twitter. They need governments to make sure they can do this for them.

I think we're on the edge of a change in how modern democracies work. They can't continue on their current form. They never really did a good job of representing the people anyway, it's just that since the proliferation of the internet, everyone is much more aware of this fact.

Re:Of course

[FudRucker]

RE:"since the proliferation of the internet, everyone is much more aware of this fact."

yup, the cat is out of the bag, I wonder how civilization will react when the government starts destroying free speech on the internet in their lame attempt at putting the cat back in the bag.

Re:Of course

[Apothem]

The real question is how far are people willing to go to do something about it? Will it be truly peaceful, or will we end up having to get into a civil war with our own military first?

Re:Of course

[dbet]

During the enlightenment, we had a period of about 100 years where Europe went from almost all monarchy to almost all democracy. How many of those were peaceful? Surely some of them.

Also, information works both ways. If you know your citizens are on the eve of mass riots, you might get radical changes before any actual violence begins.

Re:Of course

[Apothem]

Also, information works both ways. If you know your citizens are on the eve of mass riots, you might get radical changes before any actual violence begins.

Heh you put it very well indeed. I never thought about that side of the coin really. If it can be stated and shown without major incident, you may be right. Best of all, even the possibility of that is something that shows how far we've gotten. At least there is a chance.

Re:Of course

[SuperTechnoNerd]

"how far are people willing to go to do something about it?"
Problem is most people are unaware, less us slashdotters, or don't care or both. There are more of them than there are us. And by the time they figure it out the horse has already left the barn. Don't forget too, people are sheep.

Re:Of course

[c0lo]

The oligarchies of the world do a fair job of controlling media, but they can't control blogs or twitter. They need governments to make sure they can do this for them.

twitter is not representative (thus rather irrelevant). Let me demonstrate by googling on:

CISPA - 1540 results
SOPA - About 673,000 results
lady gaga - About 5,020,000 results
bieber - About 8,030,000 results
pr0n (about 42,100 results) + porn (about 2,070,000 results) - an "total about" of 2,112,100 (what???).

Everybody knows Internet is for porn and the rule 34. Now, you cannot argue that porn is less popular than Lady Gaga or Bieber - therefore Twitter must be non-representative.

Now, I tell you what you can do to prove me wrong (don't bother replying to this post, it's equally irrelevant): just sign the petitions on EFF and avaaz.org . Even better, open or sign a petitions on the We, the people site.
Then, of course, twit about it and prove me wrong.

Re:Of course

[jez9999]

To get rid of a monarchy peacefully, you need to get lucky and have one benevolent dictator.

To get rid of the US system, you need to get a majority of corrupt assholes in the senate, house, and presidency to reform a corrupt system that rewards corrupt assholes. Ironically, the monarchy is far easier to reform than a system that calls itself democratic.

Re:Of course

[0111 1110]

just sign the petitions on EFF [eff.org] and avaaz.org [avaaz.org] . Even better, open or sign a petitions on the We, the people [whitehouse.gov] site.

Won't the DHS put me on some kind of list for being a "domestic extremist"?

Re:Of course

[dryeo]

If America has a civil war, it'll be between Republicans and Democrats, not citizens and the government. It's amazing how polarized American politics is, especially considering how similar the two parties actually are.

Read the Bill before commenting, please

[Anonymous Coward]

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.R.3523:

Note that the bill simply allows the national intelligence community to provide classified threat information to ISP's. There is no provision in the bill for the ISP's to provide any information back to the government.

Now, it is co-sponsered by that idiot bachmann, but that doesn't make it ipso facto bad.

Re:Read the Bill before commenting, please

[Anonymous Coward]

Read part (b) of the bill; that covers sharing information with the government.

Re:Read the Bill before commenting, please

[Anonymous Coward]

The key word is that the ISP MAY share information with the government. I don't think that this is requiring the ISPs to share anything. Basically this bill seems to be aimed at allowing the classified threats to be shared with ISPs so ISPs can block those threats. I would think the proper response would have been to just make those threats unclassified, instead of drafting a bill to share classified information with ISPs...but nobody likes to declassify anything in the government.

Re:Read the Bill before commenting, please

[Anonymous Coward]

Baby steps, you must take baby steps to erode rights away. Besides, corporate america and the US government are almost one in the same these days, it's only a matter of the left and right hand working better together.

Re:Read the Bill before commenting, please

[Anonymous Coward]

The key word is that the ISP MAY share information with the government. I don't think that this is requiring the ISPs to share anything.

I think the rest of your post is fine, but you're being awfully naive about "MAY".

Old system:
.gov: "We can haz data?"
.com: "Not without a warrant. That's illegal. Our customers would sue us."
.gov: "Only if they found out. We're not gonna tell anyone, and you're not gonna tell anyone, right?"
Qwest: "Fuck you guys, we're still not breaking the law." .com: "I guess we're damned if we do, and just as damned if we don't. We'll grudgingly give you the data."

Under CISPA, the ISP is immune from liability. So it goes more like:

.gov: "We can haz data?"
.com: "Not without a warrant."
.gov: "Even if our request was illegal, the law says you can't get sued for helping us break the law. Remember what happened last time someone decided not to help us break the law?"
.com: "One 18-wheeler full of backup tapes, comin' up!"

Is it time for an amendment to the Constitution?

[Anonymous Coward]

Denying unlawful search and seizure of any digital transmission?

Communication?

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought it was ruled that internet traffic was data and therefore not controlled by wiretapping laws. Now suddenly its "communication" again so that they can "stop any online communication"?

The price of freedom...

[Dutchmaan]

..is eternal vigilance. Did you think they were just pretty words?

Re:The price of freedom...

[the eric conspiracy]

That's the down payment. The full price is much higher.

What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed, if so celestial an article as Freedom should not be highly rated.

Re:The price of freedom...

[Anonymous Coward]

Not really. They are pretty words. The price of control is eternal vigilance, and it still fails.

I dare quote Orwell (from Shooting an Elephant , bold added):

[...] Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed native crowd – seemingly the leading actor of the piece; but in reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind. I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys. He becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy, the conventionalized figure of a sahib. For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the "natives," and so in every crisis he has got to do what the "natives" expect of him. He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it. I had got to shoot the elephant. [...]

Re:The price of freedom...

[c0lo]

..is eternal vigilance. Did you think they were just pretty words?

If you don't, at least sign the petitions on EFF and avaaz.org sites. The spread the word.

Re:The price of freedom...

[jez9999]

Here's a group that got really (rather over-) powerful through basically numbers and popular support: the NRA. How did they do it, and how can we emulate it? Is there just something hard-wired into a bunch of people's skulls that makes them emphatically support guns? I doubt it, because in a load of European countries, guns are largely banned and the people are happy about it.

Hmm

[lightknight]

Fascinating: The government is going to deal with those experiencing fear of loss of privacy & general disgust at the government's actions by granting itself more power, so it can invade the privacy of and engage in various ethnically-questionable / morally-casual actions towards those experiencing fear of loss of privacy & general disgust at the government's actions, so that it can manage their fear & disgust at its actions.

Gentlemen, I believe we have reached 'equilibrium.'

Re:Hmm

[Thing 1]

ethnically-questionable

I believe you meant "ethically" although upon further inspection, both might work (war in the middle-east generally kills a different ethnic segment of the population).

Re:Hmm

[lightknight]

Ethically, yes, correct.

Re:Is it time for an amendment to the Constitution

[SteveFoerster]

There's an amendment for that already, the fourth. The problem is that requiring constitutionality of legislation doesn't mean anything if the judiciary doesn't defend it, and when it comes to this the courts are totally fucking useless.

which presidential candidates would sign this?

[Anonymous Coward]

obama: yes
romney: yes
santorum: yes
ron paul: no

if this gets voted into law and you didn't vote for the one guy that would stop it, you have no one to blame but yourself.

Re:which presidential candidates would sign this?

[Ultra64]

Why would anyone throw their vote away voting for Ron Paul?

Re:which presidential candidates would sign this?

[tbird81]

Why would you throw your vote away voting for anyone else?

I'm not from the States, so don't know much about the candidates, but even though he might have some silly beliefs regarding certain things (but then all of your candidates essentially have to be Christian), he at least seems to want less government control.

Re:which presidential candidates would sign this?

[dgatwood]

The problem with Ron Paul, like most libertarians, is that he wants less government control over everyone. In reality, although all men are created equal, not all men end up with equal amounts of power. Those with the most power require the most checks on that power to prevent abuse.

Right now, there are two groups with lots of power: corporate leaders and government officials. If you deregulate businesses, you reduce the amount of government power, while increasing the amount of corporate power. This is not a net gain or a net loss; whether the people with the most power are governments or corporations is immaterial because in the long run, the net effect is the same. You'll still have the same disparity between the power held by an average citizen and whoever has the most power, which means that many (most?) of those who have power will abuse it, and there won't be anything meaningful that the average citizen can do about it when they do.

What makes proper government hard is that the people who most desire power are invariably the ones who are least qualified to wield it, and thus the ones from whom government must protect us the most. This is difficult not only because those sorts of people have a tendency to weasel their way into positions of power within governments, but also because it is very hard to write rules that maximally affect people with power and minimally affect people without it.

The best that can be hoped for is a government that gets it right most of the time, which pretty much requires high taxes on people with lots of money to reduce their ability to grow that money without bounds, treating capital gains (at least above a certain dollar figure) as ordinary income, an outright ban on political contributions made by groups of people who are not acting as individuals (whether that group be a corporation, a union, a PAC, or any other organization), and a few dozen other major fixes that are far enough removed from this discussion that I won't bother mentioning them here.

Note that most of these things are precisely the opposite of what Ron Paul wants. He wants to eliminate the income tax and capital gains taxes, which means that all revenue would be through regressive taxes that further increase the disparity between the rich and the poor, and thus the power difference. His voting record shows that he supports PACs and rejects nearly all manner of campaign finance reform (disclosure rules for donations by lobbyists, limits on soft money ads, etc.). And so on.

In short, Ron Paul is really just another side of the same coin as the Democrats and the Republicans. That's not what we need. What we need is to throw away the rusty old coin entirely and bring in people with fresh ideas.

Re:which presidential candidates would sign this?

[shiftless]

The problem with Ron Paul, like most libertarians, is that he wants less government control over everyone. In reality, although all men are created equal, not all men end up with equal amounts of power. Those with the most power require the most checks on that power to prevent abuse.

The world doesn't work anything like you think it does....

Re:which presidential candidates would sign this?

[smellotron]

In short, Ron Paul is really just another side of the same coin as the Democrats and the Republicans. That's not what we need. What we need is to throw away the rusty old coin entirely and bring in people with fresh ideas.

Given the current theater of candidates, Paul is the fresh idea. He's not young, but he's different enough that a big voting block would scare other candidates and local lawmakers into attentiveness (to the constituency rather than lobbying interests).

Re:which presidential candidates would sign this?

[tbird81]

Why are the "99%" crowd (is that still around) so obsessed with money?

I don't care if companies become rich, or people earn lots of money - that's not the problem. The problem is when these people influence government - who in turn makes the rules for the population.

I'd rather have a flat tax, than all the system at the moment:
"Voters - We need to think about the environment. That is why we're giving subsidies to green industry." (By green industry they mean their friends who'll build windfarms in silly places with coal backups, and get paid for it.)
"Voters - Intellectual property rights are an important building block of America, and protect innovation." (Letting media lobbyists right the rules, in exchange for much needed publicity.)
"Voters - We need to go to war in a foreign land to protect our Freedom." (And their good mates will be getting the contract.)
"Voters - We need to protect the economy." (Prints more money, essentially taking it from every American, and gives it to banks which have already ripped people off - largely because the government made it difficult for banks to say no to a stupidly unaffordable mortgage.)

At the moment many rich celebrities don't pay tax as they have a couple of trees on their property so get farm rebates. Businesses declare 0 income and pay no tax. A flat tax is preferential to this. Money isn't important - power is. That's what we need to wrestle back off the corporations.

The way to fix this is to stop the government controlling this type of thing, and then, no matter how much money a company earns, they won't be able to write the rules. Now I'm not saying no government control - it's important - but not as much as we've allowed at the moment.

From the sounds of things RP is the only one talking about this. Everyone else just waves their red or blue flag, thanks God, and does more of the same.

Re:which presidential candidates would sign this?

[0111 1110]

I don't think it is individual men who tend to have such power. Yes, money is power in a way. With enough money someone could even finance his own private army of millions of soldiers and overthrow the government itself. But that sort of thing is rare and is just the price for individual liberty.

Remember that, without the help of the government, corporations have far less power. If our government were not so corrupt then perhaps corporations might have been somewhat useful. Although I don't believe shirking responsibility and making society pay dearly for a free insurance policy was ever a good thing.

Limited liability corporations that are treated as individuals themselves are a blight on society. They are too powerful. They are the only legal entities that can approach the power of even a small government. For that reason alone they should be feared and controlled if at all possible.

I consider myself a Libertarian, but I believe that limited liability corporations should be outlawed. That's right. They should be illegal. Treated as a kind of conspiracy or a form of organized crime. No sort of limited liability should be offered by the government. That is the beginning, the root of fascism. Once government tyranny is stopped, large concentrations of power as found with megacorporations should be dealt with in some way.

In fact this process of vigilance for concentrated forms of power such as corporations is one of the better justifications for having at least a small government. Having said all that, historically governments have nearly always been the source of repression and tyranny. The sort of SciFi dystopian future where corporations have the real, direct power of governments and have their own private police forces that subjugate the populace to their will has so far been limited to fiction. That's not to say that it is not possible and that it should not be feared, but at the moment the opponent with the knife to our throats is a corrupt government. In an ideal world politicians would not accept bribes and their votes could not be purchased for any price. Obviously that is not the world we live in however, and the corporations responsible for buying these laws have to be held responsible as well. There are people at those corporations who should be hanging from lamp posts along with the politicians agreeing to take away our freedoms.

Re:which presidential candidates would sign this?

[dgatwood]

I don't care if companies become rich, or people earn lots of money - that's not the problem. The problem is when these people influence government - who in turn makes the rules for the population.

No, influencing government is only a small part of the problem. The bigger problem with allowing any entity (human or corporate) to accumulate too much money is that it can exert excessive control over the free market. For example, a company making electronics that becomes a monopoly in a particular industry could ostensibly pre-purchase inventory at the capacity of every part manufacturer, thus essentially squashing the ability of any new competitor to enter the market. A major retailer with major bulk purchasing power could crush any new competitors by undercutting them, then raise prices again. And so on.

At some point, you become rich enough to eliminate competition. Once that happens, the invisible hand of the free market ceases to function. Not only are customers no longer free to buy the product from someone else, but your employees may no longer have the ability to easily get a job in the field without moving a large distance. And when you decide to consolidate your plants and move them all to Mexico or China or whatever, those employees are screwed because your competitors no longer exist. The U.S. has lost so many manufacturing jobs in large part because we allowed a small number of corporations to grow arbitrarily large instead of insisting that each of those plants be operated as a separate business.

At least when it comes to corporations, the public interest is almost always better served by a larger number of medium-sized companies than by a smaller number of large companies. It stands to reason that this is the case for individuals as well, though an individual is more likely to manipulate the stock market than the components market. Either way, the same basic principle applies.

Summary

[WhatAreYouDoingHere]

monitor, censor and stop any online communication that it considers disruptive to the government or private parties

Personally, I think the government (and maybe some private parties too) should be disrupted. No, I didn't read the article (ha!)

I keep repeating myself

[Mister Liberty]

Do unto them as they....
&c.

"Vague Definitions"

[Cazekiel]

The word 'vague' in this alone scares me. There was a super-ridiculous kerfluffle in livejournal.com years ago, which is historically noted as 'Strikethrough 2007' to those who were affected by it. One complaint from a religious-based family group, concerned with Harry Potter being portrayed in "precarious positions" both in fanfiction and artwork, sent a ripple-effect through the site. It went from deleting a few users without warning (causing a strikethrough in their username) to a basic witch-hunt, with hundreds of users--some paid accounts, or even those who footed the bill for expensive permanent accounts--being deleted, when most didn't have anything but 'harry potter' and 'fanfiction' listed in their profile's interests section. Very few involved the younger crowd at Hogwarts in sexualized-artwork. Simply implying that you were interested in Potter-based communities (even some not related to the Potter-universe itself) within the site fueled enough panic from the livejournal staff.

Funniest part was, it was done while The Boss Of Them was out for the weekend. When he returned, he gave massive apologies and reinstated users unfairly deleted. Still, the "event" lingers in the back of everyone's mind five years later.

Re:"Vague Definitions"

[SuperTechnoNerd]

Of course all thees laws are vague, because thees congress critters proudly admit they have no clue how the internet works, both technically and socially. All they have is big media and greedy thugs telling them this is the right thing to do. They look at all the zeros on the checks they receive from said entities and say "Yes they must be correct and the internet is too free and open. My gosh anyone of the %99 can express their opinion! It has no place in our profit driven power hungry society. And this is exactly why they don't want to know.

Re:"Vague Definitions"

[Cazekiel]

It reminds me of the movie 'August', wherein 'old money' meets the internet-financial world by the end... only Old Money takes over with finesse and precision. The fact that David Bowie played the ringleader of the company made me cringe and smile evilly at the same time.

Re:"Vague Definitions"

[Anonymous Coward]

The word 'vague' in this alone scares me. There was a super-ridiculous kerfluffle in livejournal.com years ago, which is historically noted as 'Strikethrough 2007' to those who were affected by it. One complaint from a religious-based family group, concerned with Harry Potter being portrayed in "precarious positions" both in fanfiction and artwork, sent a ripple-effect through the site. It went from deleting a few users without warning (causing a strikethrough in their username) to a basic witch-hunt, with hundreds of users--some paid accounts, or even those who footed the bill for expensive permanent accounts--being deleted, when most didn't have anything but 'harry potter' and 'fanfiction' listed in their profile's interests section. Very few involved the younger crowd at Hogwarts in sexualized-artwork. Simply implying that you were interested in Potter-based communities (even some not related to the Potter-universe itself) within the site fueled enough panic from the livejournal staff.

Funniest part was, it was done while The Boss Of Them was out for the weekend. When he returned, he gave massive apologies and reinstated users unfairly deleted. Still, the "event" lingers in the back of everyone's mind five years later.

'vague' is what "An anonymous reader" writes. If you are scared of what random people on the Internet write, it would be best for your mental health if you stop visiting here.

Re:"Vague Definitions"

[Cazekiel]

Pearls of wisdom, given to me by an 'Anonymous Coward' who's decided to randomly judge my mental health and what I can handle on /.

Sue them.

[Anonymous Coward]

Since the STUPID FUCKING AMERICANS seem to think that they own the internet, can we just sue the U.S. into bankruptcy for hosting all the illegal shit they are so concerned about? Possession is like 99% of the law, right? THEY LOOK GUILTY TO ME!

Sue hollywood too since they make all those illegal movies.

MY LOGIC IS INFALLIBLE!

Re:Sue them.

[Anonymous Coward]

Goddamnit, stop blaming Americans for the idiots we have in office. Not all of us are at fault. Some of us "threw away" our votes on sane individuals who risked their mental health to run for office and make things better.

Captcha: proceeds

Re:Sue them.

[Anonymous Coward]

Because it's not just the idiots you have in office, it's the idiots behind the office and across the street from the office. Basically the whole fucking thing needs to burn since the 'not idiots' seem either unwilling or unable to do anything about it. Wtf do you have all those guns for anyway?! Useless fucks.

Re:Sue them.

[element-o.p.]

That would be far more effort than it's worth. Trust me, we are bankrupting ourself fast enough that about all you'd get for your effort is the lawyer fee.

Surrender Monkeys

[Phoenix666]

Guys, let's stop thinking like Surrender Monkeys when it comes to SOPA and the government. Congressmen are just politicians and almost without exception very stupid people. They make knee-jerk decisions based on how many drinks lobbyists bought them at the bar the night before. But they are most definitely very susceptible to the prospect of pitchfork-waving crowds, eager to nail their hides to the barn door.

Look at what happened with the last SOPA showdown. The backlash was so severe and massive that Congress was practically pissing itself to run away from that bill. We, by their standards, melted their phone lines and crashed their Blackberries.

Last time we had Google and Wikipedia and other high-traffic sites leading the charge, but we can't count on them doing it again next time or to not make a deal with Hollywood/the RIAA.

We can create the perception of a groundswell preemptively. We can give them a taste of their own medicine preemptively, the very same medicine they would foist on us. If they want to subject us to crap like this, let's hijack their individual Blackberries and let them feel what it's like to have this done to them by anonymous strangers.

Honestly when I read sentiments like, "Oh well, the government is going to screw us no matter what we do so let's give up now," it reminds me of that scene from Swingers

Trent: You know what you are? You're like a big bear with claws and with fangs...
Sue: ...big fucking teeth, man.
Trent: Yeah... big fuckin' teeth on ya'. And she's just like this little bunny, who's just kinda cowering in the corner.
Sue: Shivering.
Trent: Yeah, man just kinda... you know, you got these claws and you're staring at these claws and your thinking to yourself, and with these claws you're thinking, "How am I supposed to kill this bunny, how am I supposed to kill this bunny?"
Sue: And you're poking at it, you're poking at it...
Trent: Yeah, you're not hurting it. You're just kinda gently batting the bunny around, you know what I mean? And the bunny's scared Mike, the bunny's scared of you, shivering.
Sue: And you got these fucking claws and these fangs...
Trent: And you got these fucking claws and these fangs, man! And you're looking at your claws and you're looking at your fangs. And you're thinking to yourself, you don't know what to do, man. "I don't know how to kill the bunny." With *this* you don't know how to kill the bunny, do you know what I mean?

For pete's sake, people, we're the people who run the central nervous system of the world. How is it that we psych ourselves out over stuff like this? We should be able to mold the government like putty. And it would help that every time we send them a message we put a common tagline like "Free America!" so that they understand it's a spontaneous expression from the electorate that they're fucking up and better straighten up and fly right.

Re:Surrender Monkeys

[Anonymous Coward]

"We should be able to mold the government like putty."

Right. We SHOULD, but what actually does this is money. Always has, and as long as the self-serving vomit that passes for politicians in this country keeps getting elected (which they will because face it, no other type of person can succeed as a politician. That's our system--garbage in, garbage out), always will.

Forgive my "surrender monkey" pessimism, but I have absolutely zero confidence in the political system of this nation. I don't see how any one not under the spell of one of our two flavors of gov't could. It's a rigged game where the people who should have the upper hand always lose. Short of tearing down the whole damn thing and starting over from law 1, nothing can change it.

Re:Surrender Monkeys

[phantomfive]

We should be able to mold the government like putty.

All you have to do is convince a lot of other people to agree with you, and to actually care somewhat. Good luck.

Re:Surrender Monkeys

[Xacid]

1 down.

Re:Surrender Monkeys

[Mikawo]

For pete's sake, people, we're the people who run the central nervous system of the world. How is it that we psych ourselves out over stuff like this? We should be able to mold the government like putty.

I want to believe this can happen, but simply spouting these ideals on /. will not magically get the needed support. There is real organizational work to be done; not just a post in a public forum.

Browsing /., I've seen plenty of people who are expressing unrest at the U.S. government taking away our freedoms and some even hint at wanting a revolution. There is no shortage of people who would like their voices heard. The problem is that these voices are fleeting. Like your post and perhaps like mine, people will read and think, "Yeah, I agree with that!" but then they will go on about their business without really connecting with our ideals. If people don't commit, ideals will simply exist as wishful thinking and we end up standing alone.

It's true that there is power in numbers, but to gain those numbers, there must be a way for people to commit. This is why real organizational work must be done. There needs to be a highly visible resource that people can join; a resource that acts as a platform that together we can use to fight for our freedoms.

Ideally, the platform would aggregate issues that threaten our freedoms and provide information about the appropriate actions to take for each issue. People who have joined and are committed to the cause know that they are not alone and that they can take actions that will actually be meaningful.

I'm aware of various sites/petitions that try to inform about threats to our freedoms and some do provide info about possible actions to take, but I found that not only do they typically have poor visibility (some sites I've only found by chance), but they mostly only address specific issues and not the problem as a whole (i.e. government thinking they can take our freedoms). Since the sites only address specific issues, people are forced to scour the web looking for any new issues and they must manage all of that activity themselves. Let's face it: for the average person, this represents too much work. It doesn't mean they don't care at all, but just that they have other priorities in their life (like making a living). Simplifying the time consuming process of independent research into a single resource is bound to create more awareness and also increase participation.

Until a platform comes along to rally the people together, expect the strength of the people to go to waste. People are getting angry but so long as they do not gather together, their voices will not be heard.

Re:Surrender Monkeys

[VortexCortex]

For pete's sake, people, we're the people who run the central nervous system of the world. How is it that we psych ourselves out over stuff like this? We should be able to mold the government like putty. And it would help that every time we send them a message we put a common tagline like "Free America!" so that they understand it's a spontaneous expression from the electorate that they're fucking up and better straighten up and fly right.

Uhm, yeah, sure. Except the tagline was "We are Legion", and they called themselves Anonymous.

Before you say anything --
Protip: The enemy owns the Mass Media Outlets, and it works.

(After you say anything, re-read the above line.)

Re:Surrender Monkeys

[iter8]

The thing that really gets me about all of this is that the US federal government, states, and localities already have tremendous power to do all of the snooping, spying, and arresting people for online activities that could need. They just need to take care of a few bothersome details like warrants. The new laws they want simply remove any judicial or administrative oversight so the various governments can do what they please without any questions being asked: DMCA is too much trouble - gosh, we have to send a letter; a warrant is too much trouble - golly, we have to ask a judge to rubber stamp this application. It's tyranny by the lazy and people indifferent to citizen's rights.

At the risk of being hunted down...

[idbeholda]

When legislation like this crops up again, after we, the people have already said "No" emphatically, then the legislators supporting this particular shit show need to be immediately, physically and forcibly removed from any and all offices. Period. There is no interest in national security here, this is merely an attempt to grasp at straws. Seeing this kind of crap being birthed from the loins of political prostitutes (even though they're basically the same thing) honestly makes me ashamed to admit that I live in the United States.

I'm sure that our forefathers would say the exact same thing. Anyone who genuinely believes that this trainwreck of an idea is a good thing either needs to have their head examined or is being paid by a corporation and/or consortium. Fucking goddamn, this pisses me off.

Re:At the risk of being hunted down...

[jez9999]

Fucking goddamn, this pisses me off.

It should be completely predictable. I've said before many times that the US is totally fucked until you somehow overhaul your entire political process. The first step is making people realize this needs to happen, and as long as the people keep calling the US "a democracy", that step hasn't been fulfilled.

Re:At the risk of being hunted down...

[idbeholda]

If I could mod you up as informative, I would.

IP is worthless

[shentino]

All copyrights, patents, and trademarks are used for these days is for Big Business as weapons to skewer and brain-bash people they don't like, be it competition, criticism, or anyone else that doesn't subscribe to whatever dogma is mandated by the company's bottom line. It seems that the fastest way to ruin is to piss off a corporation.

The stunt that UMG pulled against the Mega Upload video is proof of that, as is the Geohot and Scrolls lawsuits. Both of which by the way were won by big companies with a lot of weight to throw around squashing the little guys with their legal muscles and intimidating them into giving up without a fight.

Considering that TBP is getting sponsors in record numbers (no pun intended) for its ad banner program I think it's quite clear by now that only abusive companies really have any interest in strengthening IP laws.

What should we do now

[Anonymous Coward]

So.

What can we do which is bigger than the blackout?

I don't want to believe we don't stand a chance. We have to keep fighting.

Re:What should we do now

[sjames]

Disconnect Washington D.C. from the net? Shut down ALL telecommunications in D.C.? The blackout was a simple peaceful protest.

Re:What should we do now

[c0lo]

So.

What can we do which is bigger than the blackout?

I don't want to believe we don't stand a chance. We have to keep fighting.

Start by signing the petitions on EFF and avaaz.org sites. Then spread the word.

Also, you may want to consider setting up a Tor bridge using Amazon free tier (if you can't afford to pay $30 a month to sponsor a more permanent one)... just in case.

Does it seem to you

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it seem to you that the three branches of the Federal Government are having a contest to see who can destroy America the fastest?

I will have to find another source

[Anonymous Coward]

I will not say this article is incorrect, but we are only given one link and I will find another source before simply beleiving the info in the given link. The link is to RT and, like many media sources, I have found some of their past articles to be questionable in either bias or the level of understanding the authors have in the actual subject matter. It is always a good thing to question sources and motives when it comes to media.

Regardless, this is still something I should research.

freedom isn't freedom

[alienzed]

I keep seeing people protesting with huge signs with the words 'Freedom' and 'Liberty' on them. I mean, who buys that BS anymore anyway? There's no such thing as freedom, and 'liberty' in what sense? You can't be completely free and still expect society to be safe, I mean, what about the freedom to kill? The freedom to feed oneself at the expense of another creature or someone else? Hopefully someday we'll have a third party, the Realist party. Until society can handle to not believe in noble lies, we're doomed to mediocrity. On a side note, I thought of a great analogy to show what's wrong with capitalism today. The original expression: If you give a man a fish, you'll feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, you'll feed him for life. The capitalist version: If you sell a man a fish, you'll feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, or give a man a fish, you'll go out of business.

Re:freedom isn't freedom

[SuperTechnoNerd]

I love your fish analogy.. How about:

If you teach a man to fish, or give a man a fish, you both get slapped with a massive law suit.

Re:freedom isn't freedom

[0111 1110]

Freedom means being able to do anything you want as long as it does not affect the freedom of others to do the same. It means that the police cannot come to your home at 3 AM and drag you into a prison cell for something you posted on slashdot. It means that you are not a slave who exists only because the government allows it.

A free society is one in which people don't have to fear that everything they value, everything they have, their very lives can be taken at the whim of a government.

You can never be free from the difficulties of life. A lot of the time life just sucks. Freedom won't change that. And freedom never means the freedom to violate other people's rights. I suspect you know that, which makes me curious about your agenda.

Liberty is the opposite of slavery. It means that no government or any other powerful interest has the legal right to interfere with your life unless you have yourself already interfered with someone else's. It means as much fairness and justice as is possible in a world full of selfish, sociopathic, vicious, evil thugs whose only mission in life is to hurt and control others.

Move to Amend

[Linsaran]

See, this is what happens when we allow corporations to have a 'voice' in politics by spending money on campaign contributions. A law which was suppressed by overwhelming public opposition (SOPA) can creep back into the system because there are some (arguably powerful) corporations in favor of it.

I support (along with a lot of other people) amending the constitution to get rid of this kind of loophole. I think the Move To Amend people got the right idea.

With an amendment like that in place maybe we'd actually see candidates pandering to their constituents instead of whatever corporate interests contributed the most to their campaign fund.

Re:Move to Amend

[Anonymous Coward]

Good find. Any idea why we did not hear about this site before when SOPA and PIPA were doing the rounds?

I also wonder why does a petition like the one here have more than 450k signers yet one that seems to tackle more of the critical problem have less than 200k?

Re:Move to Amend

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks for this, signed up and will be ordering bumperstickers.

This is what you get, statists

[Anonymous Coward]

Just the other day I was reading a large majority here on Slashdot pathetically cheering on the FDA to regulate popcorn at movie theaters. Yet when the government comes to stomp on the favorite freedoms of computer nerds--the whining can be heard across interstellar space. Well here's the deal folks: This is what you get with government. When you unleash it on the other guy, sooner or later it comes back to bite your ass. Until you get this and learn to stop asking for government to solve social problems, you are a part of the problem--statism. So don't whine about SOPA or DMCA or whatever alphabet soup bullshit they think up next, unless you have first established a consistent set of principles of what government is, what it should and should not do, or whether or not it should even exist. And no, "government should regulate that over there that I don't like or that greedy corporation that I'm so afraid of despite the fact that I can just choose to not buy its products, but don't interfere with what I want to do, and by the way, gimme some stuff for free!" is not a principle. It's dishonesty, and the fuel upon which statism feeds. Yet it is a concise summary of the philosophical mush that inhabits the minds of, not so ironically, 99% of the population. Good luck keeping your freedom. Too bad luck isn't going to be enough.

Since even the DOD network is compromised,

[Anonymous Coward]

A recent DOD audit found that even the DOD network is completely compromised.

The government has demonstrated time and time again that they can't keep information secure or prevent abuses. There have already been convictions for Social Security employees collecting benefits of dead people, IRS employees stealing the tax refunds of citizens, DMV employees selling personal info to organized crime for identity theft and even FBI employees selling state secrets to the enemy in time of war. Do we even need to mention the convicted pedophiles the TSA hired to molest children?

The logical thing would be to bar all government access of confidential data unless they can demonstrate an immediate and specific need to a judge, who can then issue a warrant.

As it turns out, that's exactly what the Founders of the US did. Electronic documents may be new but government corruption and abuse never changes and must always be guarded against.

I've got an idea for a new law - any holder of government office or authority convicted of accepting any gift or renumeration should be stripped of office and citizenship. Why would they object unless they are accepting bribes?

Encryption is a partial answer

[Anonymous Coward]

ENCRYPT ALL THE THINGS!11!!1!!

http://encrypteverything.ca/index.php/Main_Page

They can beat your key out of you, but it becomes more difficult to spy on you without your knowledge.

STOP DROP and give me 50

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok first off I want to say "PEOPLE IN GENERAL ARE LAZY"

Lazy is just a generic word these days, because it really doesnt describe the level of retardation in society. To many people bitching and moaning, and whining about how the government is screwing them over.

HEY ASSHOLES!!! WE THE PEOPLE ARE THE GOVERNMENT!!!

The only way shit changes with big brother is if we stand up and tell them straight up. "STOP"

The reason this shit is happening, is because everyone is cowering behind a goddamn keyboard, rather than getting off their ass, going to the library. Finding out how to write a proper letter of protest.

Submitting it to the Representative.

Than going to the newspapers, and radio shows, and trying to recruit like minded individuals. To follow suit. To create public awareness.

The more people, the better. If you really want to fight this, and you really want to prevent this. STAND UP, GET OFF YOUR ASS. DO SOMETHING. MOVE!

Protesting injustice is a constitutional right.
We the people, for the people working and fighting for freedom.

Re:STOP DROP and give me 50

[0111 1110]

The idea that the people are the government is exactly the sort of brainwashing that serves their purposes well. No matter what they do. No matter what laws they pass that beat us down and violate our most basic rights as sentient beings. They can enslave us. They can imprison us. They can take everything we value. Our very lives. And all we will do is moan about how it is our own fault because "we are the government".

I am not the government. I don't support them in any way. I don't support the laws they pass. I didn't vote for any of the people in power. I have absolutely no responsibility for what they are doing.

In the end a civil war is the only thing that will save this country, but people will have to be willing to kill and to die and to see blood off innocent people running in the streets. For children to be obliterated before they've even had a chance to live. For all the ugliness that comes with war. Especially war against a much stronger adversary. One with nearly limitless funds and all the power of modern technology. To face an army terrifying enough to take on the greatest of the worlds governments. One that could face down China or Russia or even Japan or Germany or the UK. What can a disorganized army of volunteers do against a force as mighty as that?

Past history allways points the way.

[Anonymous Coward]

It was talked about over 2,000 years ago by Aristotle in his works called Politics.

Democracy turns in to Oligarchy and they will try to distort the middle class, because it is the middle class that has the real power but they do not always understand it.

The people in power seems to forget that as more and more are taken away their power becomes less and less needed until the masses sweep them away and yes it is most always bloody for both. Having a large middle class keeps people that have nothing believing that they can at least have a chance for a bit better in life, remove that you will remove the reason they care about anything but what they can take by any means.

()-()

LOL

[chihowa]

...vote for people who have morals and ethics...

I wish! In which election has this been possible?

Are we really that naive?

[the eric conspiracy]

Does anyone really believe today that any information that one posts to the internet is confidential?

It seems to me that internet privacy has been an oxymoron since the earliest days. Why do you think we have technologies like PGP and VPN?

Does this bill really change anything?

Legalize Watergate

[PineHall]

What you need to tell our representatives is that this would make a modern day Watergate legal. You need to point out how it could affect them.

Re:Legalize Watergate

[betterunixthanunix]

Telling incumbents that they could spy on their political opponents? That does not sound like a detterent to me...

The only way to stop SOPA / PIPA ideals

[Anonymous Coward]

The "man" is going to keep pushing SOPA / PIPA like acts until they finally get through. Eventually the public will get bored with hearing about it and become unconcerned with them and they will pass. The only way to stop them would be to have laws passed that make it illegal to do the things they are trying to accomplish.

The FCC passed net neutrality rules that are attempting to protect content from being throttled / censored, "lawful" content anyway. The important thing here is that the FCC did not outline what should be or needs to be blocked, which is hopefully an area they will never enter. The Republicans tried to overrule the FCC's net neutrality regulations, President Obama threatened to veto such an act if it passed, but he did not have to because the Senate shot down the Republican attempt to stop net neutrality.

The reason I am talking about the FCC and net neutrality is that we need a similar set of rules / regulations / laws that make the SOPA / PIPA disgraces illegal, and will therefore keep them from being passed.

George Carlin had it exactly right

[Anonymous Coward]

George Carlin -"Who Really Controls America"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hYIC0eZYEtI

The Legislation

[MrKaos]

If just the people here were reading the proposed legislation, tearing it to pieces in the same way we are speculating about it many of the objectionable parts would be removed. Many politicians don't read the legislation they vote on.

I understand

[Phoenix666]

but I'm not talking about a standard political movement. And I'm also not talking about the average person. Over the years we've all seen that it's nearly impossible to get the "average person" to give a crap about anything, unless it be the statement, "Satan is about to return to Earth and eat your children. Do you support or oppose this fact?"

No, I'm talking about geeks. I am talking to the people who read Slashdot, because it is a self-selected community of people who care more about freedom and common sense than the average.

I have taken the "organizational" approach you describe in the past. It is a fool's errand. You always attract the whiniest members of society who avidly work to undermine your organization unless it feeds their own, very personal dysfunctions. And it does not matter how clearly you articulate your intentions to work for general issues--they will always try to get everything to be about their own niche dementias.

Change does not come from mass movements. Change comes from a very few highly motivated, highly skilled people who are able to act effectively and subsequently explain things to the "average person" in such a way that they can blandly acquiesce. That's it.

That's why I post this sort of sentiment on /., and not on, say, Digg, because the latter would be a total waste of my time.

Geeks, such as are still found on /., do have the ability to take the reins of the world and guide it to a better place. I urge them to do so, and not to give in the Surrender Monkey thinking.

I applaud

[Phoenix666]

your sentiment, but not its suggested implementation. 60's style mass movements have been rendered irrelevant by today's authorities, because they refuse to acknowledge them or allow them to be covered by the media. Thus, 3.5 million people can show up to protest the invasion of Iraq in New York alone, and the rest of the country can be barely aware of it because the media does not cover it.

But action does make a ton of sense, if focused effectively. I claim that giving elected officials a personalized version of citizen activism does far more to change their behavior than mass action. That renders them more, not less, susceptible to the actions of informed citizens such as populate /.

Elected officials still think they get to visit laws and rules upon the populace to which they are personally immune. They think they get to take dumps on the public and still go home to their mansions at the end of the day. If we teach them that in fact the citizens know where they live, and will stop at nothing to make *them* live the reality they would force upon the rest of us, that even the sociopaths who comprise our government at all levels will get the message.

*That* will produce change. The other, mass movements, will not.

Re:I applaud

[0111 1110]

Don't they just send the cops, the goon squads, in to 'disperse' the demonstrations with mace bombs, rubber bullets, batons, and sometimes even those newfangled sonic and microwave compliance rays? Occasionally some real sadistic fuck opens fire into the crowd with his automatic rifle or shotgun and shows everyone who's boss.

Government agents will just be sent in to 'get medieval' and to restore order through delicious violence and lusty skull cracking, and fill entire buses with new prisoners. In the eyes of the police the only good citizen is one who is already in custody or in the morgue.

Eventually the only way to have a real demonstration will be to arm the crowd with AR-15s with laser sights, plenty of ammo, and level IV body armor. To give the cops pause. Police are generally cowards at heart. They've probably never experienced a an actual fair gunfight in their whole career.

Frankly some kind of revolutionary army is going to be the only way to change the current broken and corrupt system. Unfortunately, by the time enough people are sufficiently motivated to risk their lives in such an endeavor everyone will be too closely monitored for it to work.

Re:I applaud

[PopeRatzo]

60's style mass movements have been rendered irrelevant by today's authorities, because they refuse to acknowledge them or allow them to be covered by the media.

I agree, that's why the movements have to be closely tied to other specific behaviors in the marketplace (boycotts) and the workplace (strikes, slowdowns, etc).

A two-pronged attack. You hit them where they live, in the pocketbook, and you let them know who you are, by public demonstration.

It's one thing for the police to whoop ass on a bunch of dirty hippies. It's another thing entirely when the families and communities of those very police start participating in the protests.

That's ultimately what brings down even the most repressive regimes. When the police and the military realize that the folks out in the streets are their families, friends, wives, husbands and children. Then it's a very quick end to the regime.

This is one of the reasons why the GOP & corporatist-run state governments have been careful to leave the police alone when it comes to union busting: because they need someone to bust the heads of the regular working people. But at some point, if the movement becomes big enough, there are not that many police who will bust the heads of their own family and friends.

That's why we have to get this done before the privatization of law enforcement and the penal system is fully in place. ALEC and the Koch brothers are gung ho to make all prisons and police forces private corporations just for this purpose. Instead of law enforcement coming from the community, you get a bunch of "professional" police who come from elsewhere for the promise of a decent-paying job and have no ties to the community so they don't have a problem with putting down any public action as ruthlessly as possible.

Re:I applaud

[PopeRatzo]

Frankly some kind of revolutionary army is going to be the only way...

No, just the opposite. It is absolutely necessary that this stay very closely tied to communities, to families. Once you militarize the movement, you become enemies to anyone who responds to patriotic rhetoric. Plus it gives the regime cover to use military means to beat you back down.

You want to always remain community. Remain family. Remain tied to the people in law enforcement and the military. This is ultimately the greatest danger from this new "professional military". When there's a draft, and everybody is liable to be called to serve, it's very hard to use that kind of force to put down a rebellion by the population. But a "professional" military is a different story. They are no longer "everybody", they are the people who like using too much force - who like beating heads. It's the old argument that anyone who really wants to be a cop should be the last person who should be a cop. Anybody who really really wants to carry a gun should be the LAST person who should be allowed to carry a gun.

ventually the only way to have a real demonstration will be to arm the crowd with AR-15s with laser sights, plenty of ammo, and level IV body armor. To give the cops pause

I'll bet I'm not the first person who pointed out to you that you are a fucking idiot. We're talking about making things better and you're going on about some Resistance vs Skynet fetishistic fantasy. You're pitiful. Any real movement to try to change things would stay as far away from people like you as possible. Your either a narc or a creep. Either way, you're no help.

Re:I applaud

[makomk]

This is one of the reasons why the GOP & corporatist-run state governments have been careful to leave the police alone when it comes to union busting: because they need someone to bust the heads of the regular working people.

The current British government actually screwed this one up recently. As I recall, it was shortly before the riots that left London burning.

Where do we Protest?

[Mongo T. Oaf]

Everybody needs to get together and protest CISPA. Where should we go, who should we write, where should we protest? This is America!! Our collective voice still counts, I think.

There is one solution..

[GigaBurglar]

Copyright infringement is just another excuse to drum up more industry. 'Cyber' security / anti-terror - it's all the same to me; not to mention the other industries that benefit off the scraps.. such as IP law. The government are paranoid about it's citizens; the money that flows from the pockets of it's citizens go into the pockets of corporations that implement solutions - two birds with one stone; the US, and even the UK to an extent, are waist deep in lobbyist bullshit after all. This, to me, is the tell tale signs of an emerging far right system of governance. It's not the government we are fighting - it's the system of extreme capital and greed - where does it stop? There are two paths, major changes at an ideological level or continue fighting the good fight. The war on drugs was never won and never will be. Digital proliferation is a whole different ballgame - they will not be fighting criminals but ghosts. One sure way to neutralise a possible impending digital distopian future is through obfuscation - you don't have to hide if enough false positives are produced to set their heads spinning. Worms of the future may not steal your financial data but, instead, send 'the man' out searching for an endless stream false positives and legal dead ends - have them fighting their own system. :>

Robert Heinlein had a few ideas

[0111 1110]

Comrade Members, like fire and fusion, government is a dangerous servant and a terrible master. You now have freedom--if you can keep it. But do remember that you can lose this freedom more quickly to yourselves than to any other tyrant. Move slowly, be hesitant, puzzle out the consequences of every word. I would not be unhappy if this convention sat for ten years before reporting--but I would be frightened if you took less than a year.

Distrust the obvious, suspect the traditional . . . for in the past mankind has not done well when saddling itself with governments. For example, I note in one draft report a proposal for setting up a commission to divide Luna into congressional districts and to reapportion them from time to time according to population.

This is the traditional way; therefore it should be suspect, considered guilty until proved innocent. Perhaps you feel that this is the only way. May I suggest others? Surely where a man lives is the least important thing about him. Constituencies might be formed by dividing people by occupation. . . or by age. . . or even alphabetically. Or they might not be divided, every member elected at large---and do not object that this would make it impossible for any man not widely known throughout Luna to be elected; that might be the best possible thing for Luna.

You might even consider installing the candidates who receive the least number of votes; unpopular men may be just the sort to save you from a new tyranny. Don't reject the idea merely because it seems preposterous--think about it! In past history popularly elected governments have been no better and sometimes far worse than overt tyrannies.

But if representative government turns out to be your intention there still may be ways to achieve it better than the territorial district. For example you each represent about ten thousand human beings, perhaps seven thousand of voting age--and some of you were elected by slim majorities. Suppose instead of election a man were qualified for office by petition signed by four thousand citizens. He would then represent those four thousand affirmatively, with no disgruntled minority, for what would have been a minority in a territorial constituency would all be free to start other petitions or join in them. All would then be represented by men of their choice. Or a man with eight thousand supporters might have two votes in this body. Difficulties, objections, practical points to be worked out--many of them! But you could work them out. . . and thereby avoid the chronic sickness of representative government, the disgruntled minority which feels--correctly!--that it has been disenfranchised.

But, whatever you do, do not let the past be a straitjacket!

I note one proposal to make this Congress a two-house body. Excellent--the more impediments to legislation the better. But, instead of following tradition, I suggest one house of legislators, another whose single duty is to repeal laws. Let legislators pass laws only with a two-thirds majority . . . while the repealers are able to cancel any law through a mere one-third minority. Preposterous? Think about it. If a bill is so poor that it cannot command two-thirds of your consents, is it not likely that it would make a poor law? And if a law is disliked by as many as one-third is it not likely that you would be better off without it?

But in writing your constitution let me invite attention the wonderful virtues of the negative! Accentuate the negative! Let your document be studded with things the government is forever forbidden to do. No conscript armies . . . no interference however slight with freedom of press, or speech, or travel, or assembly, or of religion, or of instruction, or communication, or occupation. . . no involuntary taxation. Comrades, if you were to spend five years in a study of history while thinking of more and more things that your government should promise never to do and then let your constitution be nothing but those negatives, I would not fear the o

Arms, people, arms!

[Anonymous Coward]

The whole point of the right to bear arms was to defend the freedoms of the people against oppressive future governments.

In other words, the founding fathers envisaged shooting people who table abusive legislation like this. Not trying them in court, not arresting them, but having them shot as traitors.

No Incumbants 2012

[Anonymous Coward]

Citizens of the United States harken to this message. Are you sick of the methods, agendas, and results of Republicans and Democrats? Are you tired of the candidates with the most money consistantly winning the elections? Do you always feel that you are voting for the lesser of two evils? Now is the time to do your civic duty. Now is the time to reset the government. Here is how we turn the U.S. around in 2012.

1) Vote them ALL out of office. This includes members of the House of Representatives, Senate (if applicable), and President. Even local elected officials would not be immune.
2) Don't vote for ANY Democrat or Republican in 2012. Choose anyone else, or abstain if no other option exists.
3) Keep a record of your assigned voting number and votes (to contest "anomolies").
4) Pass this message around to everyone (but foil spambots). Cut and paste content. List yourself in the "To" field and recipients in the "BCC" field.

We only have to unite around this cause ONCE - in November 2012. All we need to do is stick together and send a clear message to Washington D.C.

"We must all hang together, or assuredly we will all hang seperately" -Benjamin Franklin

Hypocrisy

[gottabeme]

The insightfulness of your comment eludes me.

How about this for irony: people like you want me to be tolerant of your opinion; I explicitly tolerate it by stating that it should be legal and allowed; but you are intolerant of my opinion--you want me to not only tolerate yours but endorse it--you want freedom from my interference, but you want to control my opinion. How's that for hypocrisy.

Russia Today, really?

[Anonymous Coward]

If this is a serious issue, can we get a source on it that's not blatant propaganda sponsored by a foreign government?

I mean, rt.com is good for a laugh of two, but it's not a credible source on anything other than what Mr. Putin thinks.