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Rep. Mike Rogers Calls CISPA Opponents "14 Year Old Tweeters in Their Basement"

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11–20 of 88 posts

Re: Rep. Mike Rogers Calls CISPA Opponents "14 Year Old Tweeters in Their Basement"

#11
post #3

As Senator Mark Hanna said in 1895 (118 years ago!): "There are two things that are important in politics. The first is money, and I can't remember what the second one is."[1] If you want to understand why Representative Mike Rogers is mocking CISPA opponents as "14 Year Old Tweeters in Their Basement," just ask, who finances his political campaigns? I hate to be cynical, but calling your Representative may not be en…

Is there a good lobby to donate to that lobbies for EFF-like positions?

Re: Rep. Mike Rogers Calls CISPA Opponents "14 Year Old Tweeters in Their Basement"

#12
post #2

Debate on CISPA is happening on the floor right now, you can watch online here: http://www.c-span.org/Live-Video/C-SPAN/ But most importantly, take 2 minutes and call your House Rep and tell them what you think about CISPA: https://eff.org/r.5bPw

I called my reps last week, but it also might not be a bad idea to drop Rogers a line on twitter, explaining who and what you are, and telling him that you oppose the bill. I found it quite cathartic.

I hope you didn't forget to mention that you're neither 14 nor residing in a basement.

Re: Rep. Mike Rogers Calls CISPA Opponents "14 Year Old Tweeters in Their Basement"

#13

Anytime someone's argument is the moral equivalent of 'my opponents are doodie-heads' I pretty much start ignoring them. It is a shame that an elected official, ostensibly 'leading' our country, is making such idiotic arguments and isn't more embarrassed about doing so.

Unfortunately, you can ignore politicians, but they're not going to ignore you...insofar as your rights are concerned at least.

Re: Rep. Mike Rogers Calls CISPA Opponents "14 Year Old Tweeters in Their Basement"

#14
post #3

As Senator Mark Hanna said in 1895 (118 years ago!): "There are two things that are important in politics. The first is money, and I can't remember what the second one is."[1] If you want to understand why Representative Mike Rogers is mocking CISPA opponents as "14 Year Old Tweeters in Their Basement," just ask, who finances his political campaigns? I hate to be cynical, but calling your Representative may not be en…

http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.php?cycle=201...

Re: Rep. Mike Rogers Calls CISPA Opponents "14 Year Old Tweeters in Their Basement"

#15
post #3

As Senator Mark Hanna said in 1895 (118 years ago!): "There are two things that are important in politics. The first is money, and I can't remember what the second one is."[1] If you want to understand why Representative Mike Rogers is mocking CISPA opponents as "14 Year Old Tweeters in Their Basement," just ask, who finances his political campaigns? I hate to be cynical, but calling your Representative may not be en…

it seems these days you can swap out the word "politics" in that quote with just about any other field and it'll remain just as true.

Re: Rep. Mike Rogers Calls CISPA Opponents "14 Year Old Tweeters in Their Basement"

#16
post #3

As Senator Mark Hanna said in 1895 (118 years ago!): "There are two things that are important in politics. The first is money, and I can't remember what the second one is."[1] If you want to understand why Representative Mike Rogers is mocking CISPA opponents as "14 Year Old Tweeters in Their Basement," just ask, who finances his political campaigns? I hate to be cynical, but calling your Representative may not be en…

Is there a good lobby to donate to that lobbies for EFF-like positions?

EFF is happy to take your money.

Re: Rep. Mike Rogers Calls CISPA Opponents "14 Year Old Tweeters in Their Basement"

#17
post #8

In some aspect he is exactly right - our CISPA fight needs support not only from tweeters, but from people like founders of Twitter who can speak in the language of money and campaign funds. The tech industry is so much bigger and more important to USA economy than the content industry that allowing them to dominate the lobbying discussion is just a 'tail wagging the dog' situation.

CISPA has nothing to do with the content industry. You'll also find that the tech industry has plenty of lobbyists, and a few of them are supporting CISPA. (Ed: Ah, there's tptacek on this thread.)

Re: Rep. Mike Rogers Calls CISPA Opponents "14 Year Old Tweeters in Their Basement"

#19
I find the choice of "14 year olds" quite fascinating, because 14 year olds don't have voting rights. If 14 is replaced with 18, then suddenly the phrase takes a completely different tone, since then it'd be disenfranchising a block of the population that has legitimate voting rights.

I feel that 14 was chosen deliberately to give teh additional implication that CISPA opponents "don't have the right to oppose it" or something along those lines.

Re: Rep. Mike Rogers Calls CISPA Opponents "14 Year Old Tweeters in Their Basement"

#20
post #10

Mike Rogers is making it very hard to defend CISPA by saying things like this, but I'll point out that what Mike Rogers thinks about CISPA opponents is probably the least important thing to know about the bill. Something you might want to know is that "Fight For The Future" feels comfortable riling you up without telling you the full story about the bill. CISPA, according to FFTF, "lets the government spy on you with…

I'm not familiar with the bill, but based on your description, why does there need to be a bill to share information about attacks with law enforcement and security providers? Why couldn't this happen already? If Yahoo! were sharing data with a security agency about an attack, this would seem pretty reasonable.
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