Justin's Political Corner
The biggest thing to come out of Texas may turn out to be a blow to Internet freedoms: legislators there are considering a bill that would compromise privacy on the Web for all residents of the Lone Star State.
It would appear that Rep. Mike Rogers, the main person in Congress pushing for CISPA, has kept rather quiet about a very direct conflict of interest that calls into serious question the entire bill. It would appear that Rogers’ wife stands to benefit quite a lot from the passage of CISPA, and has helped in the push to get the bill passed. It’s somewhat amazing that no one has really covered this part of the story, but it highlights, yet again, the kind of activities by folks in Congress that make the public trust Congress less and less.
It has seemed quite strange to see how strongly Rogers has been fighting for CISPA, refusing to even acknowledge the seriousness of the privacy concerns. At other times, he can’t even keep his own story straight about whether or not CISPA is about giving information to the NSA (hint: it is). And then there was the recent ridiculousness with him insisting that the only opposition to CISPA came from 14-year-old kids in their basement. Wrong and insulting.
(via recall-all-republicans)
Remember back in 2011, when Congress angered privacy advocates and Internet users by introducing legislation like SOPA and ACTA? When more concerns were raised as tech giants like Google fought back against federal law enforcement requests for emails? When, in 2012, Congress introduced the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or CISPA, which passed the House despite a veto threat from the White House, drawing criticism from privacy advocates?
Well, CISPA is back and completely unchanged from the original draft. And it’s this week’s topic for Underreported Story.
(via truth-has-a-liberal-bias)
In conversation with The Hill, Representative Charles “Dutch” Ruppersberger stated that he intends to re-introduce the controversial Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act in 2013.
The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, known to most as simply ‘CISPA,’ was a lighting rod bill in the House last year, leading to a contentious vote in the lower chamber, and a veto threat the President over privacy concerns. The final vote for the bill was rammed through so quickly that a half dozen of its co-sponsors did not vote for the law in the end.
CISPA passed the House 248 to 168. However, its lack of mandatory standards for critical infrastructure put it into a difficult spot, as the Senate majority was in favor of such standards. In the House they were, and likely remain, anathema. The political climate has shifted some since the last age of CISPA, but probably not enough to convince the House majority to vote in favor of increased regulation.
Naturally, the updated version of CISPA will attract heavy scrutiny when it is announced. That said, I’m not optimistic that it will have been reformed sufficiently to ensure proper privacy for the average United States citizen.
Clearly, there is a firm need for clear, strong cybersecurity legislation in the United States. This is universally agreed upon. However, after the Senate’sfailure on the larger issue, and the President’s apparent declination of issuing an executive order, to see the next round of legislative work originate in the House isn’t surprising But, as with the first version of CISPA before it, the House could trip out of the gate, and gum the wheels of progress.
H/T: TheNextWeb.us
The government can read your e-mail, texts, & track your location using your phone WITHOUT A WARRANT. Help save privacy
Maddow: Right wing copying Iranian mullas by creating their own reality (via Raw Story )
Friday night on “The Rachel Maddow Show,” host Rachel Maddow compared so-called conservative “poll-truthers” to the mullahs and theocrats of Iran, who would rather construct an artificial, sanitized Internet than risk having their fellow Iranians access the wider internet and be exposed to…
The may be the Super Friends of the Internet: A group of prominent web companies including Mozilla, maker of the Firefox Web browser, the social news website Reddit and the blogging service WordPress have teamed up with advocacy groups and lawmakers to form the Internet Defense League (IDL), a coalition dedicated to rallying Web users against government attempts to take over or destroy the world — the world wide web, that is. And they want your help, too.
“The League is about its members fighting for the interests of the Internet,” said Tiffiniy Cheng, a co-founder of nonprofit Web freedom advocacy group Fight For the Future, which is coordinating the formation of the Internet Defense League, in a phone interview with TPM.
“This is a new 21st century battle for some of the same old basic rights like free speech, freedom to assemble, and the League is here to fight and to win and to help Web users stay engaged,” Cheng added.
To those ends, the IDL is first setting up a new Web-based alert system to allow members to warn of new legislation that they think will harm the Internet’s functioning, and is hosting launch parties Thursday night in San Francisco, New York, Washington, DC, London and Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia.
There’s a certain irony, perhaps deliberate, to the IDL’s prominent reliance on a major Hollywood tentpole film to bolster its message, as its many of its members — including Fight for the Future and Reddit — are vocally opposed to the attempts by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) to get legislation passed to crack down on online piracy of movies like “The Dark Knight Rises.”
But Fight for the Future and the IDL may no longer be as opposed to each other’s advocacy work as they once were.
Asked if the MPAA or major Hollywood studios were invited to join the IDL, Cheng told TPM: “If they’re willing to play fair, then sure.”
At the same time, as the Internet has grown, it has seen more attempts by government officials, agencies and policymakers to regulate it and clamp down on its more freewheeling practices, such as file-sharing, which facilitate illegal activity. It’s these attempts that the IDL opposes.
Two such recent such instances of U.S. laws designed to crack down on online piracy specifically include the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT-IP Act (PIPA), two bills that Congress was considering in late 2011 and early 2012. The MPAA and the Recording Industry Association of America supported both bills.
Wyden, Issa and Polis were all among a small group of lawmakers that opposed the bills from their onset, but they were bitterly outnumbered for a while and the bills looked poised to pass.
SOPA and PIPA abruptly lost support in Congress and were scrapped after a massive online protest by Web users and websites on January 18, in which many sites voluntarily blacked- their homepages to show the censoring effect they argued the bills could have. That protest, known as “Blackout Day,” was spearheaded by Fight For the Future and its allies.
Now those groups have formed the IDL in an effort to create a more permanent, and slightly more organized, campaign in the advent that future bills pop-up.
Part of that effort includes a new alert system: An embed code, which is a few lines of HTML text that website owners can simply copy and paste onto their pages.
Verizon cites its First Amendment right to free speech as grounds against the FCC net neutrality rules, but it may like the alternative to net neutrality even less.
Verizon originally filed suit against the FCC in early 2011. However, that case was thrown out of court because the FCC had not yet officially defined the rules and the court ruled that Verizon couldn’t sue the FCC over rules that didn’t technically exist yet.
In that case, Verizon simply asserted that the FCC was exceeding the bounds of its authority. However, according to the FCC site, “The FCC was established by the Communications Act of 1934 and is charged with regulating interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite and cable. The FCC’s jurisdiction covers the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. possessions.” That sweeping charter appears to grant the FCC the exact authority Verizon claims it doesn’t have.
This time around, Verizon is playing the First Amendment card. The challenge, essentially, is that by limiting Verizon’s ability to choose which content to block or promote, the FCC is infringing on Verizon’s right to free speech.
There are a couple major flaws in the argument. First, an individual’s right to free speech shouldn’t apply equally to a corporation. I’m not a Constitutional scholar nor a legal expert, but it seems to me that a corporation can say what it chooses as a function of the fact that the people actually saying it have an individual right to free speech. However, the corporation as an entity doesn’t necessarily enjoy that same right, and—in fact—the corporation’s right to free speech is already limited by rules governing false advertising or mandates to include specific text or warnings on products.
Second, the FCC net neutrality rules don’t actually inhibit an ISP’s ability to express itself freely. Under the FCC rules, Verizon is free to publish whatever content it chooses—it simply can’t block or discriminate against other content as a matter of business practice.
The fact of the matter is the vast majority of the data traversing the ISP’s network (like Verizon) doesn’t belong to the ISP in the first place. An argument could be made that by throttling or blocking traffic Verizon is actually the party guilty of stepping on the First Amendment rights of others.
Let’s assume for a minute, though, that Verizon has a First Amendment right to free speech, and that the court agrees this right is somehow violated by the FCC net neutrality rules. There is another approach to the problem that might make net neutrality the lesser of two evils by comparison.
What do you think? Does the Verizon First Amendment claim have merit? Should Verizon and other ISPs be allowed to throttle or block certain network traffic? Or, do you think the FCC net neutrality rules are valid and necessary?
David Barton believes that everything should operate under Biblical principles, and according to Barton, the Bible even has a view on rules for Internet service providers like Net Neutrality. Here’s a hint: the Bible opposes it. As noted in People For the American Way’s new report, “Barton’s Bunk: Religious Right ‘Historian’ Hits the Big Time in Tea Party America,” Barton finds that the Bible always has a pro-corporate, pro-GOP message.
Barton and his partner Rick Green hosted Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) [no relation], a vocal foe of Net Neutrality who has received significant contributions from Net Neutrality opponents like Comcast, Verizon and the National Cable & Telecommunications Association. Net Neutrality ensures that Internet service providers can’t charge higher rates for faster delivery of content. The New York Times explains that Net Neutrality allows “Internet users [to] get access to any Web site on an equal basis” and without the policy, service providers can “give preferential treatment to content providers who pay for faster transmission, or to their own content, in effect creating a two-tier Web.”
But David Barton says that the Bible, Ben Franklin and the Pilgrims all opposed Net Neutrality because it violates the rights of huge corporations to charge higher rates and discriminate on content, calling it a “wicked” policy and “socialism on the Internet.”Even though David Barton claims to know that the Bible is decidedly against Net Neutrality, evidently he has no idea what Net Neutrality is, since he is decrying the policy as “redistribution of wealth through the Internet.”
h/t: Brian Tashman at RWW
Online advocates, fresh off their victory against the Stop Online Piracy Act, are now gearing up to oppose CISPA because of the disastrous effect the bill could have for private information on the internet. The bill’s opponents argue that it goes too far in the name of cybersecurity, endangering citizens’ personal online information by giving the government access to anything from users’ private emails to their browsing history.
As the fight in the Senate begins, here is everything you need to know about CISPA:
- CISPA’s broad language will likely give the government access to anyone’s personal information with few privacy protections: CISPA allows the government access to any “information pertaining directly to a vulnerability of, or threat to, a system or network of a government or private entity.” There is little indication of what this information could include, and what it means to be ‘pertinent’ to cyber security. Without boundaries, any internet user’s personal, private information would likely be fair game for the government.
- It supersedes all other provisions of the law protecting privacy: As the bill is currently written, CISPA would apply “notwithstanding any other provision of law.” In other words, privacy restrictions currently in place would not apply to CISPA. As a result, companies could disclose more personal information about users than necessary. Ars Technica writes, “if a company decides that your private emails, your browsing history, your health care records, or any other information would be helpful in dealing with a ‘cyber threat,’ the company can ignore laws that would otherwise limit its disclosure.”
- The bill completely exempts itself from the Freedom of Information Act.
- CISPA gives companies blanket immunity from future lawsuits
- Recent revisions don’t go nearly far enough: In an attempt to specify how the government can use the information they collect, the House passed an amendment saying the data can only be used for: “1) cybersecurity; 2) investigation and prosecution of cybersecurity crimes; 3) protection of individuals from the danger of death or physical injury; 4) protection of minors from physical or psychological harm; and 5) protection of the national security of the United States.” This new version still “suffers from most of the same problems that plagued the original version,” writes Timothy Lee. Because terms like “cybersecurity” are so vague, the bill’s language could encompass almost anything.
- Citizens have to trust that companies like Facebook won’t share your personal information.
- Companies can already inform the government and each other about incoming cybersecurity threats.
- The internet is fighting back: The same online activists who fought hard against SOPA are now engaged in the battle over CISPA. Over 770,000 people have signed a petition by the online organizing group Avaaz that asks Congress to defeat the bill. Reddit, the news-sharing internet community that helped lead the fight against SOPA, is organizing again around CISPA.
- Most Republicans support CISPA, while most Democrats oppose it: The House passed CISPA on April 26 on a mostly-party-line vote, 248-168. Among congressmen that voted, 88 percent of Republicans supported the bill while 77 percent of Democrats opposed it.
- President Obama threatened to veto it: Recognizing the threat to civil liberties that CISPA poses, President Obama announced this week that he “strongly opposes” the bill and has threatened to veto if it comes to his desk. Obama singled out the provisions that allow for blanket legal immunity and do not enough to safeguard citizens’ private information.
H/T: ThinkProgress
CISPA Replaces SOPA As Internet’s Enemy No. 1 (Must Read)
The Internet has a new enemy. The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011 (CISPA), also known as H.R. 3523, is a “cybersecurity” bill in the House of Representatives. While CISPA does not focus primarily on intellectual property (though that’s in there, too), critics say the problems with the bill run just as deep.
As with SOPA and PIPA, the first main concern about CISPA is its “broad language,” which critics fear allows the legislation to be interpreted in ways that could infringe on our civil liberties. The Center for Democracy and Technology sums up the problems with CISPA this way:
• The bill has a very broad, almost unlimited definition of the information that can be shared with government agencies notwithstanding privacy and other laws;
• The bill is likely to lead to expansion of the government’s role in the monitoring of private communications as a result of this sharing;
• It is likely to shift control of government cybersecurity efforts from civilian agencies to the military;
• Once the information is shared with the government, it wouldn’t have to be used for cybesecurity, but could instead be used for any purpose that is not specifically prohibited.The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) adds that CISPA’s definition of “cybersecurity” is so broad that “it leaves the door open to censor any speech that a company believes would ‘degrade the network.’”
Moreover, the inclusion of “intellectual property” means that companies and the government would have “new powers to monitor and censor communications for copyright infringement.”
Furthermore, critics warn that CISPA gives private companies the ability to collect and share information about their customers or users with immunity — meaning we cannot sue them for doing so, and they cannot be charged with any crimes.
According to the EFF, CISPA “effectively creates a ‘cybersecurity’ exemption to all existing laws.”
“There are almost no restrictions on what can be collected and how it can be used, provided a company can claim it was motivated by ‘cybersecurity purposes.’” the EFF continues.
“That means a company like Google, Facebook, Twitter, or AT&T could intercept your emails and text messages, send copies to one another and to the government, and modify those communications or prevent them from reaching their destination if it fits into their plan to stop cybersecurity threats.”
Read the full text of CISPA here, or the full official summary at the bottom of this page.
SIGN THE PETITION TO SAVE THE INTERNET FROM CISPA
(via socialistexan)
Former Senator Chris Dodd (D-CT), now the CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America, the movie industy’s lobbying group, believes that the hated national anti-online piracy legislation known as SOPA (The Stop Online Piracy Act) is being revived.
Critics of the bills pointed out that the bills’ language was overly broad and could result in the forced takedown of pages on Reddit, Wikipedia, YouTube and other popular social websites where users share links and files, some of which go to copyrighted material. Supporters, including Dodd and the MPAA, contend that the bills are necessary to fight online piracy and protect American jobs, though their claims have been repeatedly challenged and/or debunked.
h/t: Carl Franzen at TPM
