Who Needs CISPA? FBI Has a Non-Profit Workaround

nonprofiteer writes "What has been left out of the CISPA debate thus far is the FBI's long time workaround for information sharing with private industry: 'In 1997, long-time FBI agent Dan Larkin helped set up a non-profit based in Pittsburgh that "functions as a conduit between private industry and law enforcement." Its industry members, which include banks, ISPs, telcos, credit card companies, pharmaceutical companies, and others can hand over cyberthreat information to the non-profit, called the National Cyber Forensics and Training Alliance (NCFTA), which has a legal agreement with the government that allows it to then hand over info to the FBI. Conveniently, the FBI has a unit, the Cyber Initiative and Resource Fusion Unit, stationed in the NCFTA's office. Companies can share information with the 501(c)6 non-profit that they would be wary of (or prohibited from) sharing directly with the FBI.'"

Comments

In other words,

[fredrated]

who needs laws in a country ruled by money?

Re:In other words,

[causality]

who needs laws in a country ruled by money?

The film Network summed it up nicely. The protagonist, Howard Beale, meets with a tycoon named Jesson. Among other things, Jesson says to him:

"YOU HAVE MEDDLED WITH THE PRIMAL FORCES OF NATURE, MR. BEALE, AND I WON'T HAVE IT! Is that clear?! You think you merely stopped a business deal? That is not the case! The Arabs have taken billions of dollars out of this country and now they must put it back! It is ebb and flow, tidal gravity, it is ecological balance!

"You are an old man who thinks in terms of nations and peoples. There are no nations! There are no peoples! There are no Russians, there are no Arabs, there are no Third Worlds, there is no West! There is only one holistic system of systems, one vast and immane, interwoven, interacting, multivariate, multinational dominion of dollars. Petro-dollars, electro-dollars, multi-dollars, reichmarks, rins, rubles, pounds, and shekels. It is the international system of currency which determines the totality of life on this planet. That is the natural order of things today. That is the atomic and subatomic and galactic structure of things today! And YOU have meddled with the primal forces of nature, and YOU... WILL... ATONE! Am I getting through to you, Mr. Beale?

"You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today.

"What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state? Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime.

"And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that... perfect world... in which there's no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. And I have chosen you, Mr. Beale, to preach this evangel."


That's how they think. They don't see the dehumanization.

Not news

[girlintraining]

Private organizations and citizens can collect evidence that the police cannot due to legal restrictions. This is not news. However, sharing with a non-profit can still violate contractual agreements; This is what CISPA aims to kill, along with the notion that companies can refuse until a warrant is served. By removing all risk, law enforcement can just look at a company and say "Gee, that's a really nice data center you have there. A shame it would be if we had to search it for drugs..." And viola, instant and total compliance -- company lawyers can no longer say there's a liability, so even the slightest coerceion makes surrendering the data the right business move.

Can't use in criminal case?

[ShiftyOne]

Interesting to think about whether the Fourth Amendment applies here. The Fourth Amendment only protects us from government action. This non-profit would be considered a private person, whom are only covered when they are acting in their capacity as an agent of the government. This is determined by the level of government involvement in the situation and the totality of the circumstances. I'm not a lawyer, but based on the facts here it seems like this non-profit would be considered an agent of the government, and therefore you may not be able to sue them for money damages, but the material they collect probably cannot be used as evidence in a crime.

Wow ...

[gstoddart]

So they're going to exploit a legal loophole to violate the intent of the law.

This is truly a sad thing to hear. Hopefully a court will rule that this is expressly illegal and revokes the charitable status -- this is just doing an end-run around the law.

Brilliant, we'll set up a charity which can be used to facilitate giving data to the FBI they'd otherwise be legally prevented from having.

Very sad. How do those freedom fries taste, guys?

CISPA legalizes FBI/NSA warrantless wiretapping

[mounthood]

This FBI/Private Non-Profit is no more legal then what the NSA has been doing, and its why they want to pass CISPA: it legalizes warrantless wiretapping.

Now that it's undeniable the government hasn't been obeying it's own laws for a decade, they have to either make it legal or face political consequences. Political consequences because, while people don't really care, they can no longer deny it, and they can't ignore it forever. A decade of massively illegal activity (unconstitutional!) must eventually be acknowledged and condemned by the average person.

It's like the US Internment camps for Japanese citizens during WWII -- the government gets a decade long 'free pass' to do whatever, then we either make it legal or fix it.