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US Senate Passes the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act 74-21 (dailydot.com)
blottsie writes with news that the U.S. Senate voted 74-21 in favor of CISA, a controversial cybersecurity bill. All five amendments submitted in an attempt to bolster privacy failed to pass. From The Guardian's coverage:
Try asking the bill’s sponsors how the bill will prevent cyberattacks or force companies and governments to improve their defenses. They can’t answer. They will use buzzwords like “info-sharing” yet will conveniently ignore the fact that companies and the government can already share information with each other as is. There were barely any actual cybersecurity experts who were for the bill. A large group of respected computer scientists and engineers were against it. So were cyberlaw professors. Civil liberties groups uniformly opposed (and were appalled by) the bill. So did consumer groups. So did the vast majority of giant tech companies. Yet it still sailed through the Senate, mostly because lawmakers - many of whom can barely operate their own email - know hardly anything about the technology that they’re crafting legislation about.
Blaming ignorance is more credit than they deserve. Willful ignorance is a choice of action, whereas ignorance is sometime forgivable. If they listened to any of the concerned parties they certainly didn't show it here.
Senators don't pass bills they know nothing about, they pass bills they see as having some sort of benefit. Benefits might be popularity, might be to appease donator, might be something darker. What benefit did they get from passing this and from whom? Who encouraged them to pass it?
Obligatory list of how each critter voted.
well, there was really no point in the government continuing to pretend it wasn't happening.
This legislation just codifies it.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Yet it still sailed through the Senate, mostly because lawmakers - many of whom can barely operate their own email - know hardly anything about the technology that theyâ(TM)re crafting legislation about.
Bullshit. They know damned well what they're doing: They're legalizing more and more surveillance and privacy violation of U.S. citizens, because they can. Them, them, fuck them.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
The actual vote tally shows that both Democrats and Republicans voted for the bill (74 for, 21 against, 5 abstain).
If anyone believes that voting for R (or D) is worse than the other side, or how it's the "lessor of two evils", feel free to explain this.
There are a finite number of votes in any term. When our representatives vote against the interests of the people in all votes, there is no more damage that they can do. There can be no "lesser" evil - they're both at "maximum evil".
I took a look at the text of the recent Iowa poll, the one that puts Carson ahead of Trump that everyone is talking about. I couldn't see any obvious bias (a good thing), but this question stood out:
Which do you think is the bigger risk for the future of the country?
74 To elect a president who has not held office so does not know the processes and procedures of governing
101 To elect the same sort of person who has served as president for many decades who will likely continue to do things the way they have been done with the same effect
25 Not sure
The numbers are total Dem+Rep respondents in the poll.
This is interesting because it shows that Americans (in Iowa, at least) are waking up to the realization that electing career politicians is not in their best interests.
With respect to Democrat readers, your only viable candidate on that side (Hillary Clinton) is a weak contender, while the Republican side appears to have both Trump and Carson as strong candidates.
With respect to the Republican readers, neither of your strong candidates is a career politican. One doesn't need to sell his influence to moneyed interests.
This may be the beginning of the end for career politicians and national parties.
Honestly, I find it hard to believe ignorance has much to do with it at all. There are some big name companies on the record as completely supporting FISA, including Xerox. (Funny how Xerox also seems to have most of the contracts with local govt. for maintaining speed cameras.... Just maybe, they stand to profit any time government takes on some additional responsibility concerning technology? Hmm....)
On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.
Somehow Stewart Brand's original statement got morphed into "information wants to be free."
Here is a list of the 21 senators who voted AGAINST this CISA surveillance bill.
Baldwin (D-WI)
Booker (D-NJ)
Brown (D-OH)
Cardin (D-MD)
Coons (D-DE)
Crapo (R-ID)
Daines (R-MT)
Franken (D-MN)
Heller (R-NV)
Leahy (D-VT)
Lee (R-UT)
Markey (D-MA)
Menendez (D-NJ)
Merkley (D-OR)
Risch (R-ID)
Sanders (I-VT)
Sullivan (R-AK)
Tester (D-MT)
Udall (D-NM)
Warren (D-MA)
Wyden (D-OR)
Also, Marco Rubio (R-FL), Rand Paul (R-KY), and Ted Cruz (R-Canada) did not vote at all, because they are huge pussies. Remember that the next time you believe any of those turds are in favor of your liberty.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The people have completely lost control over their government. Vote Bernie Sanders!
Disagree, I think it's completely relevant and on topic. The people writing these bills have absolutely no idea how the technology works, but are quite comfortable throwing away our privacy rights based on that. They are technophobic imbeciles who are driven by fear, and that's a scary thing because they have a lot of power. This is the perfect example because apparently NOBODY except the lawmakers wants this legislation, yet they don't care and vote based on their fear. It's very important that people realize the current set of lawmakers are almost entirely out of touch with modern technology, and that can have a massive stifling effect on our economy which a large portion of is based on this tech. We need young, new blood in these seats.
She might win the nomination... there's certainly a good chance. But she's hardly a shoe-in.
Everyone just kinda assumed she win the nom 8 years ago, and that didn't really pan out for her, did it? And she hadn't even committed any felonies then.
If you're good at remembering things, let your mind wander back to the summer of 2008.
Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama were both strong candidates with roughly equal support.
Hillary and Barack had a meeting, and soon after Hillary withdrew from the campaign. The Wikipedia article states that she won the popular vote but lost the nomination, but I seem to remember that her campaign lost a lot of steam after that meeting, and before the nomination.
The subtext that I read into that meeting was that the Dems felt that she was splitting the vote, and in return for her withdrawing gracefully and throwing support for Barack she would be the presumptive next nominee.
Then President Obama appointed her Secretary of State, which was also probably a result of that meeting. She got a high-prestige and highly visible position, and gets to practice being president for 8 years. (A good plan, really, and I don't begrudge that sort of deal making - it's how politics is done in this country.)
And now we're in the new cycle, and she's calling in that promise.
The problem is, she was a lackluster Secretary of State. If you assume that the E-mail and the Benghazi thing is unimportant, there's nothing that really stands out in her career.
She's a lukewarm candidate.
For those who don't need a third party to read something for them this is a link to the actual bill. The bill itself is a lot less reading than all of the articles on it.
I just gisted the bill, it looks like one of these fait accomplis that follow this disturbing pattern we see of aligning the laws of Echelon (5 eyes, sigint or whatever other names it is know by) countries within the bounds of their beleaguered constitutions. Almost a year ago to the day laws with the same intent were passed in Australia under the NSL 2014.
If I may share my interpretation the bill, the main purpose appears to be to align the legal structures for government agencies to share information. Its up for interpretation and the more eyes reading this the better. I'll need a good read to really get it.
Of specific interest was that the law is beating a pretty fast drum for the Federal agencies to comply with a 60-180 day time frame for them to develop policy. I'm going to guess that they want to allocate budget spending to implement the policy withing the next 12 months. Of particular concern in the US version the bill allows for Federal agencies to spy on state, local and individuals (sec 2.8).
If the pattern is followed we can expect the UK and Canada to be next as these legal frameworks have already been passed in Australia and NZ - both political parties supported it there as well.
Why the governments of our countries are so intent on harassing their population is anyone's guess. What would be really great is if these bills were posted to /. *before* they passed. At least then the outrage could be channeled into constructive action.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
The fingerprints of the NSA etc are all over this bill. The only question is whether we will ever discover how many of them were blackmailed into giving it their support. The scale of the vote however does suggest that there was a lot of pressure being exerted.
The phrase 'deep state' was invented to refer to the intelligence community in Turkey that used to have enormous influence in the running of that country. However it is a term which present experience shows it may be more applicable to the US than is nice to think about.
Perhaps you haven't been paying much attention to the primary races, and I certainly can't blame you for that. I seldom have until this year. But when it comes to money, Bernie is doing just fine thanks to large numbers of small donations. http://abcnews.go.com/Politics...
As for being able to win in the general election, hypothetical polls show that Bernie does just as well as Hillary in match-ups against likely republican candidates. http://www.nbcnews.com/meet-th...
For once we have a chance to vote for something other than one of two lizards, and there is a real chance he can win. Lets not let that chance go to waste ;)