Slashdot Mirror
CISPA Passes US House, Despite Privacy Shortcomings and Promised Veto
An anonymous reader writes with a story at the Daily Dot: "Despite the protests of Internet privacy advocates, the controversial Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) passed the House of Representatives Thursday. The vote was 288-127. ... CISPA saw a handful of minor amendments soon before passage. A representative for the EFF told the Daily Dot that while they were still analyzing the specifics, none of the actual changes to the bill addressed their core criticisms. ... But also as was the case the year before, on Tuesday the Obama administration issued a promise to veto the bill if it reaches the president’s desk without significant changes."
Techdirt has a short report on the vote, too — and probably more cutting commentary soon to follow.
I doubt, sincerely, that he'll veto this. Talk and actions are entirely different things. And he's got just as much ass to kiss as anyone else. He'll spin it just like everything else and say: "We're going to keep an eye on this...." Just like he's done before. But, once it's law no eyeball watching will do a damn thing to stop the ball from rolling.
Amazing to see a Bill that does an end run around the Constitution by allowing a contract (a software ToS Agreement") have the full force of law with FEDERAL CRIMINAL PENALTY.
It doesn't matter if this passes or not. The message is clear enough: The rights and liberties of US citizens are forfeit and we shall be placed under the dominion of the Corporations.
Other bills will come later when this doesn't pass, and more after that until the Corporations get what they are paying for -- full control and domain over the citizens of the US and the ability to place any arbitrary rule of law upon them that they see fit and to have the US Gov't be little more than the zealous enforcer of those arbitrary laws.
I think we need this. Maybe then this country will become so incensed as to violently take down a government so corrupt and out of control that no other means exist to change it and start again -- learning from our mistakes. Or maybe the people will become even more apathetic than they are now and just lay down and submit.
Either way -- major changes are coming for the people of the US, and none of them good.
90% was the percentage of the American people that thought reasonable background checks should have been passed.
Put aside what you think about that sort of thing and ask yourself... is this the way things are supposed to work? We live a country that is supposed to be ruled by the majority (through elected officials) with respect to the rights of the minority. The legislation respected the right of the minority and then some.
The Congress is completely unhinged. They don't represent constituencies, they represent lobbyist dollars. And we see it again with CISPA.
Since the gun background check bill died because it was believed it create a registry of gun owners (it didn't), since CISPA *CAN* create a registry of gun owners, it should be easily defeated in the Senate.
Fact: The Tea Party is against the bill.
Republicans would see the U.S changed into a society where the rich and powerful are immune to laws and everyone else is subject to monitoring 24 hours a day.
Look at his track record. He says one thing and does another.
His position on this will "evolve" just as it has on other things: it will evolve from something politically convenient to say to something politically convenient to do.
Can \ change posting to limit characters so we don't have to deal with this hostfile spam every thread?
With Liberty and Justice forestalled...
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
congress and senate are bayesian in nature. surely a theoretical mapping could get us a future bill that does what we want, and gets passed:
cyber: 2.0
Protection 2.0
Intelligence: 2.0
(gun|assault|weapon|magazine|clip) + ban: -2.0
terror: 5.0
freedom: 5.0
healthcare: -4.0
immigration: -2.0
reform: 2.0
and just for good measure, a few tags that appear to have some effect on the tracking and analysis process:
X-Voted-On-Before: y/n
X-Fillibstr?: y/n
Pander:1/0
Good people go to bed earlier.
I think one of the reasons it did get as many votes as it did was the fact that the President promised to veto it! This way they can have their cake and eat it too!
Curiosity is the single most important driving force behind innovation and learning; with the CFAA threatening the curious with felony charges (and, indirectly [for now], death) and now CISPA granting unprecedented access to citizens' private data it will be child's play for copyright/patent/security trolls to imprison those of us who now act on curiosity, poking at systems to see what we can make them do with a genuine interest in innovating for the common good, and in so doing discourage open curiosity in children. In a generation or two all we'll have are laborers, lawyers, and politicians. We can't let that happen! Also notable, since GW Bush redefined military immanence to be 'the absence of threat evidence from a known danger is not the evidence of absence of threat from said danger, and a lack of the latter should be considered an imminent threat' and Obama recently re-redefined it (not formally yet, but in leaked communications) to state effectively that 'if target person/group A (regardless of citizenship) has not been proven to be unthreatening to the US government, it is an imminent threat' and the CFAA is already becoming MORE harsh, we h@x0r types could very well find drones at our doorsteps one day soon...
90% of the American people support the CISPA legislation.
It's a good thing you've got that right to bear arms so you can stop government tyranny...
When are you going to use it?
(actually I suspect the truth of the matter is that gun owners just like owning shiny hardware and defending rights and freedom is just too much effort).
Posting anonymously for obvious reasons.
Welcome to Orwellian politics! Where the politicians and corporations live in symbiosis, all at the expense of the publius.
It IS a wonder how our politicians can agree on such an invasive policy, when they can BARELY meet eye-to-eye on the economy. I feel avarice is written all over this...
The United States government does not represent the public.
So, let me get this straight... Just because I feel like I'm living is bizarro world, where left is right, up is down and evil is good.
If this were to be signed into law, there would be more legal restrictions regarding what you can post on the internet than restrictions regarding background checks, how many bullets you can spray across a crowd per second, and how many pieces of high-end military hardware you can own... fur duck huntin'.
But buying a car requires a credit check at least, buying a ton of fertilizer requires a license and forms to be filled out, and I still can't get on a plane without taking off my shoes or getting groped and naked-scanned.
Seriously, WTF????
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
"The majority" avoid intellectual self-betterment at every opportunity. They want to get drunk and watch sports. They want jobs where they don't have to think, because that is unpleasant. The LAST thing they are going to do is think critically about the laws and carefully balance justice against implementation practicalities, or the needs of one group against the impact on another.
American citizens are, by and large, completely incompetent when it comes to self-governance. They don't understand the law, and they don't want to, so they have no business dictating what it should be.
I realize that the alternatives are horrible in other ways. But the fact is....a corporation (no matter how evil) is still made of people and still depends on dollars from "the masses" in order to thrive. If the laws they pass are too hard on the people, the people stop paying, and the corporation dies. So, there is some self-interest in passing laws that serve the greater good. Not much, not enough, but some.
With the masses and their stupidity, there is *nothing* driving them to think twice about the long-term impact of their actions.
I will take evil leaders over stupid ones any day of the week.
I looked in vain for something to mod up.
Nearly all discussion here is about the much-hyped topic of corporations possibly turning over private data on consumers to the gubmint in the name of cyber security.
While this may or may not be of concern, most of CISPA is an update to FISMA, the law that mandates how federal government information systems are acquired and what security measures are to be implemented.
So far zero on-topic discussion here.
That was a veto-proof margin: more than 2:1. If that happens in the Senate too, then it does not matter what the president thinks.
http://reporting.sunlightfoundation.com/2013/pro-cispa-backers-spend-over-100-times-more-lobbying-opponents/
Interests supporting a controversial bill aimed at improving cyber security, set for a House vote Thursday, spent 140 times as much lobbying Congress as those on the other side of the debate and have dozens of former Capitol Hill insiders working on their behalf, an analysis by the Sunlight Foundation's Reporting Group shows.
Sunlight's review of lobbying disclosures from the last session of Congress in Influence Explorer shows that backers of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act had $605 million in lobbying expenditures from 2011 through the third quarter of last year compared to $4.3 million spent by opponents of the bill. While it's impossible to say how many of those dollars were devoted to trying to influence votes on the CISPA bill (many of those entities have multiple interests before Congress), it provides some measure of the lopsidedness of the resources available to each side.
Here are the lobbying totals for supporters: https://data.sunlightlabs.com/dataset/Lobbying-totals-by-CISPA-proponents/5brg-ruk9
and opponents: https://data.sunlightlabs.com/dataset/Lobbying-totals-by-CISPA-opponents/jhe8-cki6
Obama says he'll veto it. House is Republican controlled and they probably voted against it simply because Obama is for it. Sometimes the reasoning (albeit very stupid) is sometimes pretty obvious.
Shut up, Jeremiah Cornelius. You're busted with your shitty spam.
Government has the power, yes. It's always had it. This whole big gov/small gov talk isn't new. We've been having this fight as a country for the life of our country.
Yeah, I really like the Hitler reference. You lose at the Internet. Sorry.
Really though, we have a problem of money in politics. Our politicians are bought for $X, and arrange the laws to give back out control or $X*1000000 contracts and subsidies. I don't blame the government. I blame bought politicians and companies lobbying. I also blame our founding fathers to be naive enough to set up a system that didn't deal with political parties well. We really should have a parlimentary system I'm afraid to say. We'd have more third parties.
My beef is with people that make excuses for companies, and blame it all on Big Government (And then make Hitler or Stalin references. Sigh). Really, if you took away all government oversight of businesses, you'd have the roaring 20's. You'd have tycoons owning vast swaths of EVERYTHING necessary to operate in the country. You'd have monopolies galore. And that's great (for the monopolist) for a little while. Then all the money accumulates at the top and no one can afford anything. Sound familier? Then you get the Depression...
"seek legal protection [from] governments abusing this power".... Bwwaaahahahahahahahah! Tell me another one! Lobbyists have WRITTEN every single large piece of legislation in the last few decades. And what in the world has the government done to companies in the last few decades but bail them out, give them subsidies, and GIVE them protection from the law? Oh, big bad government was beating up on the corporations. You sir, need to stop drinking the cool aid.
The correct solution is to vote out everyone, get some actual progressives in power, and start holding people accountable. I would note that the progressives are the ONLY one's to actually do this. Go Elizabeth Warren. And no, forbidding government from getting power is NOT the core teaching of the US constitution. That document was written to keep people free (except all the black people), keep the government out of the church and keep the church out of government, and bind the states together. It was amazing for it's time in setting up relationships between individual rights and state power, but it's not actually that great of a document. We've had to amend it several times. It was revolutionary for it's time, and I'm glad it came into the world, but it has it's problems. You do no one a favor by pretending it's perfect.
Oh, and there are some great writings by Jefferson about the dangers of large corporations. Remember, the East India Trading Company was a powerhouse in it's time, and lots of people were worried about abuses(which were amazingly terrible).
Tony
You're embarassing yourself Jeremiah Cornelius http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3581857&cid=43276741 since you posted that using your registered username by mistake (instead of your usual anonymous coward submissions by the 100's the past 2-3 months now on slashdot) giving away it's you spamming this forums almost constantly, just as you have in the post I just replied to.
Shut up, Paul.
Just asking.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eG6X-xtVask
http://www.mueller-public.de - My site http://www.anr-institute.com/ - Advanced Natural Research Institute
Anyone remember the IRS claiming they could read your email without a warrant? Yeah well, that's obviously debatable at present, especially if they want to just pay yahoo to scann everyone's email for signs of tax evasion. Yet, CISPA legalizes precisely that!
So that's what all these Republican and Democrat senators are really voting for here : To let the IRS scan everyone's email for signs of tax evasion.
Open a new retirement account with a couple different institutions? Bing, you're flagged for further investigation. etc.
Also, CISPA does nothing for real cybersecurity concerns because the NSA and CIA would already read your mail without a warrant.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/04/18/cispa-vote-house-approves_n_3109504.html
We need something more than a non-profit. Unfortunately, or fortunately dependent on your worldview, we need an organization that is able to financially at least make the congresscritters consider that going against this particular organization, might cost them future seat in a position of power.
SOPA failed partly because Google got involved. CISPA faced challenges only from normal peons like me or you, non-profits and few companies (FB and MS ).
And some recent speeches from people in power prove that they simply do not care. The attitude of "I IS A SENATOR, I OWN YOU LIL MAN" starts becoming a norm and not a stigmatized exception.
Sheet, Rogers simply dismissed us as lil ppl who don't know shit.
This post is provided without warranty as to reliability, accuracy or otherwise or fitness for any particular purpose.
Fuck Representatives. That's not even the fucking word for them. A purely democratic system would be horrible due to the mod rule, but it has become abundantly clear that we do need a 4th check and balance. This is the information age, we now have the technology to put all these crap laws directly to vote by thy people. The US Citizens are not being adequately represented by their representatives because of the percentage of apathy of the average American and of the lack of accountability afforded to those who are up for election to such offices. We have the technology to make our voices directly heard in these matters that will directly impact our lives.
We need no robotic senators who decide directly based on Internet poll. Instead we need those registered voters to have their own individual digital offices of government. Each voter given the option to participate in voting to veto OR PASS the same that comes before the president -- A public veto power. Furthermore we need only pass the laws that the public ACTUALLY knows and cares about. If there isn't enough direct voting support for a bill then it gets dropped automatically. This could be a HUGE boon to the current system: By opening up a direct line of thought to the actual people the laws will affect the other branches will better see how to align their decisions with that of the people who supposedly vote them into or out of office next term.
Of course there are many issues with gaming such a system, but just look at the current fucking system! Can you say it's ANY Better?! Is it any LESS game-able? No, it is MORE SO. Anyone who has even HEARD of the practice of paperclipping a bill to another to fly it under our radar should either be fighting to change the broken and corrupt system, or fighting to begin a new country not ruled by THESE oppressive pricks.
Has nature taught you nothing? Any entity that does not adapt to its surroundings WILL become EXTINCT. THAT is the mechanism that History uses to make itself repeat -- That's why they call them "revolutions", the cycle turns, and when it rolls you face down it's either time to die or adapt and be reborn.
I think the only appropriate response is to write a bot net (that people install willingly) that anyone can use run computationally expensive tasks, over the bot net.
Maybe charge a fee to schedule something. That way the people have the ability to spy on Government communications as well. It is only fair, or at the very least funny.
I will be expecting a knock on my door any time soon.
None of the Massachusetts delegation voted on the bill. Here is the roll call.
Why didn't any of the 9 representatives from the state vote? Because the President was in Massachusetts following a terrorist bombing earlier in the week.
The bill has been in Congress in some form since 2011. If the sponsors and supporters of the bill truly believe that this bill is necessary to enable "integrated operational actions to protect, prevent, mitigate, respond to, and recover from" threats to security, wouldn't it make sense to schedule a vote on passage of the bill for a day when at least some representatives of the state most recently victimized by a terrorist attack could vote? Is there any opportunism at work here, given that the entire Massachusetts delegation voted against the bill the last time it was up for passage?
It's worth reading the full text of the bill. It contains statements such as "The Director of National Intelligence shall establish procedures to allow elements of the intelligence community to share cyber threat intelligence with private-sector entities and utilities and to encourage the sharing of such intelligence."
You're embarassing yourself Jeremiah Cornelius http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3581857&cid=43276741 since you posted that using your registered username by mistake (instead of your usual anonymous coward submissions by the 100's the past 2-3 months now on slashdot) giving away it's you spamming this forums almost constantly, just as you have in the post I just replied to.
You're embarassing yourself Jeremiah Cornelius http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3581857&cid=43276741 since you posted that using your registered username by mistake (instead of your usual anonymous coward submissions by the 100's the past 2-3 months now on slashdot) giving away it's you spamming this forums almost constantly, just as you have in the post I just replied to.
Obama will not veto CISPA because it give him what he wants.
To the contrary, it's entirely on-topic. This is the typical game played by Congress: take an utterly innocuous bill (like one that is supposed to be about "how federal goverment information systems are acquired") and try to sneak in something odious amendment about something else entirely. The hope is that no one will notice. Failing that, the hope is that the innocuous bill is seen as so important that it will get passed despite containing an odious amendment.
If anyone is off-topic here, it's Congress.
Shut up, Paul
The problem is that they try and make these things so complicated. For what? Someone needs to draft a bill in freaking bullet points that does what it says and says what it does! I have yet to see one bill that should be more than a couple pages long.