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.

Comments

Veto ???

[retech]

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.

Re:Veto ???

[MyFirstNameIsPaul]

He also said he would veto the NDAA. When it comes to power of the police state, no publicly elected official who matters is opposed.

Re:Veto ???

[fustakrakich]

Yeah, his record on kept promises is pretty dismal, not that it really matters. Nobody cares enough to vote the Party out of power.

Re:Veto ???

[Genda]

I find myself at an impasse. I can vote for the party that makes the right promises then doesn't keep them, or the party that makes all the wrong promises and does keep them. This leaves me vacillating between futile hope and grotesque masochism. Where are the guys that make the RIGHT promises and keep them? Where are they hiding those guys? Oh! Right. I forgot. You can't buy the right guys. Therefore you can't sell them to the public.

Re:Veto ???

[thomasw_lrd]

The right people can be voted in to power, but you have to start at the local level and you have to keep up a running dialogue with them. You also have to spend your time, your money, and your energy to make sure they get elected. That's the problem with the American political system, the people are too lazy to do anything, but complain.

Re:Veto ???

[Joce640k]

That's the problem with the American political system, the people are too lazy to do anything, but complain.

Do you have any idea of the personal time and energy needed to change things?

The rich people/corporations can pay somebody else to do it for them. The guy in the street can't. Hence the system.

(Robert Heinlein's "Take Back Your Government" is basically this).

Re:Veto ???

[betterunixthanunix]

Where are the guys that make the RIGHT promises and keep them?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_party_(United_States)

Re:Veto ???

[MachineShedFred]

The Senate would also need a vote of 67 "yea" tallies to override a veto. They can't even get 60 votes on a lunch order, much less a veto override - and this is also considering that the majority of the Senate is the same political party as the President.

A veto would stick.

Re:Veto ???

[tlhIngan]

That's the problem with the American political system, the people are too lazy to do anything, but complain.

  Once elected, they don't care about you or your complaints, only power and $$$ from their corporate overlords.

  That's the problem with the American political system

Perhaps the best way is these days, to follow the constitution. 1 representative per 30,000 people.

It's doable these days - you don't have to fit all 10,000 reps in one building - we have telecommuting, after all.

This has enormous implications.

First, pay will have to be cut dramatically - I believe the original founding fathers expected politicians to sacrifice themselves for political life. We can easily do this by making their pay equal to the median of the people they represent (not the average).

Second, corporate influence has just gone down significantly. When you have a company spending $1B on campaign contributions, that's rougly $2M per representive right now. With 10,000 of them, that's $100K apiece, or just over $3 per person they're representing. Companies wanting to buy laws suddenly have to pay a whole lot o more money. And the amount can actually be raised by individuals in the community.

Third, more local representation - because they're going to represent a smaller slice of the population, so it's a lot easier to actually see what people in the community want. And with lowered pay, they get to see the same problems everyone else in the community has.

Fourth, less whipping possible - you try keeping the entire party in line - if we assume half and half, you try keeping 5,000 people in line - it's a lot harder.

Re:Veto ???

[s.petry]

So you are obviously not voting the right people into office. It's like picking potential wives at the bar, then expecting them to A) Not go to bars, and B) stop drinking, after you get married. If you want a person to stay at home and not drink, you probably won't find her at a bar.

Unfortunately many people lack the ability to see things rationally. I blame our education system personally, as the citizen's education must follow rules imposed by the Government.

Re:Veto ???

[cffrost]

I find myself at an impasse. I can vote for the party that makes the right promises then doesn't keep them, or the party that makes all the wrong promises and does keep them. This leaves me vacillating between futile hope and grotesque masochism.

That's a false dilemma. Voting for Democrat/Republican is not your only choice. Keep voting for liars, thieves and sociopaths, and that's what you'll always wind up with.

Where are the guys that make the RIGHT promises and keep them? Where are they hiding those guys?

In the third parties. They might not win, but you'll maintain whatever integrity you have, and you'll send an important message.

Oh! Right. I forgot. You can't buy the right guys. Therefore you can't sell them to the public.

If they're on the ballot, you can vote for them — spread the word.

Re:Veto ???

[Type44Q]

no publicly elected official who matters is opposed.

Might have something to do with the fact that the last one who actually mattered was deposed...

Re:Veto ???

[Princeofcups]

Perhaps the best way is these days, to follow the constitution. 1 representative per 30,000 people.

It's doable these days - you don't have to fit all 10,000 reps in one building - we have telecommuting, after all.

This has enormous implications.

First, pay will have to be cut dramatically - I believe the original founding fathers expected politicians to sacrifice themselves for political life. We can easily do this by making their pay equal to the median of the people they represent (not the average).

The problem is that the early politicians were mostly independently wealthy. Remember where they came from. They were a bunch of high ranking Masonic idealists who had a personal interest in making their new country work. Where can you find such idealists these days? That is, who are competent and willing to dedicate their lives? I'm not seeing ANY hands raised in this crowd.

Second, corporate influence has just gone down significantly. When you have a company spending $1B on campaign contributions, that's rougly $2M per representive right now. With 10,000 of them, that's $100K apiece, or just over $3 per person they're representing. Companies wanting to buy laws suddenly have to pay a whole lot o more money. And the amount can actually be raised by individuals in the community.

The amount of money is not the problem. It's the fact that it's business as usual for the politicians. You don't get elected without the help of the rich and wealthy. They will make sure that their people are the ones who win the elections. So they need more lower paid flunkies. How does that solve anything.

Third, more local representation - because they're going to represent a smaller slice of the population, so it's a lot easier to actually see what people in the community want. And with lowered pay, they get to see the same problems everyone else in the community has.

Fourth, less whipping possible - you try keeping the entire party in line - if we assume half and half, you try keeping 5,000 people in line - it's a lot harder.

Nor does that solve anything. Every small community has their own agenda, and with all of them arguing over who's priorities are important, we'll get even less done.

No, the problem is that there is no longer any sense of work or sacrifice of personal comfort for the common good. We are a country of "us" verses "them" in everything that we do. Everything is competition, and nothing is cooperation. Hell, how many people here are big on free market competition? As long as everyone fights to can change the system so that they can personally benefit, be it through lucrative middle class tech jobs or whatever, then it will always be "us against them."

All that we can do at this point is slow the decline of this once (arguably) great nation and avoid total collapse in our lifetimes. The parallels between the US and the last days or Rome are not just a cliche. I personally find it more interesting to think about what we can form out of the rubble when we start to rebuild. How should we do it differently next time? The US system was a great improvement on the parliamentary monarchy. We saw communism torn down through corruption even faster than our system. Where did we go wrong? How did the sociopathic assholes take over, and how do we avoid that? Dunno, but food for thought.

Handing over our Rights

[l0ungeb0y]

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.

Re:Handing over our Rights

[Intrepid imaginaut]

Look on the bright side - cyberpunk is cool and now we get to live in it! Mirrorshades and mullets baby.

Re:Handing over our Rights

[gmuslera]

It won't change. There is no space for a change in the trend when the most of the places for coordinate them (or that could disclose that it is happening) are under tight surveillance, and the remaining free/secure spaces are becoming outlawed. And most people are not aware or not care that they traded freedom for relative safety (at least until is their turn), they think they have a democracy in US, but it's just Lesterland

What worries me is how all of this spills over all the rest of the world. If you think US care little about the right of their citizens, you should see how just not care at all about others.

Re:Handing over our Rights

[Genda]

Gradual erosion? Hell, thermonuclear incineration is more like it. It took 200 years to make a social form that was the envy of the planet. It took 30 years to turn it into a corporate toilet. In the last ten, its looking like an SR-70 in a full powered dive. I'm just waiting to see Chuck Yeagers smiling face commenting "Nice Auger Job Rooky."

Re:Handing over our Rights

[BlueStrat]

The correct solution is to forbid government this power to begin with. That, more than anything else, is the core teaching of the US Constitution.

It amazes me how many here buy into the propaganda that anyone who desires that the government obey the US Constitution's limits to the government's scope and powers is somehow an "extremist".

For those confused, let me put the basic idea of the Constitution into different terms.

The US Constitution is the design for a distributed network.

It's a network of power, no different in basic principles to a computer network. The Constitution lays out the basis for a distributed network, with self-checking and redundancy built into the design. The purpose of the design is to distribute political power and it's exercise rather than concentrate it centrally, as basic network security principles assert that a distributed network is much harder to globally (in a systems sense) corrupt than simply compromising a single point of control.

Too much power has been concentrated in one place (the Federal government) over the last 100 years or so and therefor various interests fight for control, as it gives them a way to change things across the entire nation. If power were more distributed, it would be orders of magnitude more difficult and expensive to enact nationwide corrupt laws/policies/etc. Why would some special interest try to bribe/corrupt a member or branch/agency/dept. of the federal government if they don't have the power to do what they want in the first place?

Seriously, I don't understand how so many Slashdotters who in other threads show the ability to understand and point out similar flaws in complex computer and network security systems totally fail to grasp, or dismiss out of hand, the above concepts when applied to networks/systems of political power and the exercise thereof.

This should not be rocket surgery for a bunch of card-carrying Slashdot nerds and geeks, unless they've sold their geek cards to emotional rather than logical identity politics and class warfare, and abandoned logic and intellectual honesty to join in succumbing to emotional mob-mentality political/ideological mass-manipulation.

The authors of the US Constitution were genius systems engineers who were far ahead of their time. From many comments I read almost daily, I suspect they remain far ahead of many in this "modern" age as well, including many if not most of the leaders of both political parties and our elected & unelected officials in the Federal Government.

Strat

Re:Handing over our Rights

[gmanterry]

US used to be LOT better in terms of civil rights. Gradual erosion is a pain to watch.

I'm in my 70s. When my generation dies (soon), there will be no one left who really know the wonderful freedoms we experienced in this country when I was young. The problem with our dying freedoms are two fold, as I see it. Too damned many people on this earth. We have become a virus and will eventually destroy ourselves by sheer numbers. Second is that we have allowed companies to grow way, way, too large. We used to have anti trust laws which prevented one company from taking over. Now we have huge banks that are allowed to buy up all their competition except the last one. They then become too large to fail and the government protects them. When I was young banks thanked you for letting them use your money. Now they try to find ways to screw you out of it. I still have a Morgan silver dollar a bank gave me when I opened a savings account with a dollar. Net cost to me $0.00. We have shitty cell phone providers and banks who rape us because there is no competition. Capitalism works when there is competition. The disregard for anti trust has led us into these times where the corporations have become so powerful that they can, and do, buy and own our government. You and I are useful to the politicians only as a means to get into office. After that we are no longer important to them and they immediately start selling their souls to the corporations who will give them suitcases of money. Look at all the politicians who have been in government for a decade or more, all of them are wealthy. Every politician should serve two terms. One in office and one in prison. Crooks 95% of them. We are able to influence them with mass protests only because they want to retain that golden seat in government and they are afraid that if they defy too many of us they will be returned to the status of ordinary citizen... like us.

Re:Handing over our Rights

[ATMAvatar]

The authors of the US Constitution were genius systems engineers who were far ahead of their time. From many comments I read almost daily, I suspect they remain far ahead of many in this "modern" age as well, including many if not most of the leaders of both political parties and our elected & unelected officials in the Federal Government.

But alas, they failed to check for security holes in the design. Political parties and lobbyists have done an end-run around most of the checks built into the system.

90%

[MickyTheIdiot]

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.

Re:90%

[sohmc]

The problem of ruling by the majority is that minority interests get overlooked (see gay marriage).

The system we have in place currently is *SUPPOSED* to balance the will of the people (via election) and the morality of the elected (via legislature).

But you are still right that we have moved passed this. The sad thing is we deserve the government we vote for. Congress has a 95% re-election rate while having a 10% approval rating. Everyone hates what Congress has become, but everyone also things it's not their reps fault.

The only way to fix this is if EVERYONE votes out their representative, regardless of their party affiliation. We need fresh blood in there. Some of those reps won't leave until they either resign or die in office.

Re:90%

[Anonymous Coward]

Except you're wrong about the US being "Majority Rule".

We are a Republic, and our representatives have a responsibility to ensure than legislation conforms to the Constitution (not that they actually DO do this, just saying what they're supposed to do). They, in fact, have a responsibility to NOT vote in conformance with the wishes of the public when the public is straight up =wrong=.

Granted, there is absolutely a lot of corruption, but you are very, very mistaken that they should vote according to the public majority polls.

Re:90%

[GameboyRMH]

That's a republic for you, the majority doesn't have full control, elected representatives do. If they then tell the majority to fuck off and choose to enrich and empower themselves instead, and this cycle repeats forever, welp...???

Re:90%

[tnk1]

Assuming that like 94.6% of the statistics out there the 90% number isn't fudged in some way, I agree that this seems off. Although, I should point out, we were very consciously made a representative democracy and not a direct one by the founders. One of the expected outcomes is that the representatives could ignore the immediate feelings of the population, becoming accountable for their actions only as a whole at election time.

My guess is that 90% favor those checks, but not close to that many actually strongly support them. In other words, a bunch of people think it is okay to do it, but don't really care. For my part, I have no real issue with background checks per se, but I also don't see how they would have stopped any of these issues. While they *might* have dinged Lanza on mental illness, and I doubt that because he wasn't previously violent, many people who use legal firearms to kill people would easily have passed a background check of any reasonable intensity. Anyone who would not have passed the check likely knows how to get a gun from their criminal connections, or would have just stolen one.

So ultimately, while I think that background checks are probably fine, and I would probably be counted in the 90%, they really don't concern me all that much. More to the point, they still ignore the mental health issues that cause these problems to begin with. In that way, I was sad to see that the issue was predictably turned into a gun control issue and this went down predictable lines. I think a lot of energy was basically wasted in turning this into a campaign to finally break the back of the NRA, which makes it even worse now that even that appears to have failed.

Re:90%

[GodfatherofSoul]

That's a bit simplistic. If the system stays the same, the next guy in will vote the same way. We have to get corporate money out of DC AND campaigns. When politicians are no longer beholded to them to get reelected, they won't be subservient anymore.

Re:90%

[ultranova]

Secondly, I agree with the decades old problem of "my rep is fine, yours suck."

Blaming other people for your problems might be just a bit older than that...

ONE NATION, UNDER SURVEILLANCE

[Jeremiah Cornelius]

With Liberty and Justice forestalled...

On the other hand

[DadLeopard]

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!

Re:Could create a Gun Owners regsitry

[CrimsonAvenger]

Since the gun background check bill died because it was believed it create a registry of gun owners (it didn't)

No, it died because it was believed that it MIGHT BE USED to create a gun owner database.

Interestingly, where they could have put a clause in saying "It shall be unlawful to use NCIS transactions to assemble a database of gun owners", they instead put in the rather more weaselly "this law shall not be construed as allowing a database of gun owners".

Note that there is a semantic difference between "I forbid you to do this" and "I do not give you permission to do this".

Note also that the original NCIS law didn't allow such a database to be constructed, but BATF had to be recalibrated on the issue several times, since they kept right on trying to do it by various means.

Also, did you actually READ that thing?? Lending my .30-06 to my best friend for a hunting trip would be a felony, but giving it to one of my wife's cousins (whom I've never met) would be perfectly fine?! And this makes sense to whom, exactly?

Not one post about what's actually in the bill

[mbstone]

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.

Pro-CISPA out-lobbied antis by 140:1

[Freddybear]

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

Re:Laws for the internet, no law for guns

[CrimsonAvenger]

there are already background checks for firearm sales through dealers (just not gun shows or private sales)

Not quite correct.

When you go to a gunshow to buy a gun, the seller (if he's a dealer) has to do the same background check he'd do in his regular shop.

The so-called "gunshow loophole" is that you can buy a gun from a private citizen at a gunshow without a background check. Which you can do without going to a gunshow too - yes, it's legal for me to sell one of my guns to someone without running a background check.