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Civil Liberties Groups Speak Out Against CISPA in Lead Up to Hearings

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Re: Civil Liberties Groups Speak Out Against CISPA in Lead Up to Hearings

#5

Post by nlh »

One of the biggest (and most frustrating) problems with the legislative process is that the people who really want this to go through KNOW that we - "the masses" - eventually start to suffer from "protest exhaustion". They can propose a bill - we can rally our troops and get on TV and black out Wikipedia and do 100 interviews and maybe - just maybe - we can kill it.

The first time. And maybe the second time. And maybe even the third time. But after a while we're going to start to get numb to the calls-to-arms. And eventually our sometimes-well-intentioned-but-pulled-in-30-directions representatives are going to stop getting those concerned phone calls and emails from constituents, and they're going to fall prey to the typical "think of the children" argument that often gets put forward on any security bill, and something ugly is going to get passed.

I hate resigning myself to this, but it's the disappointing reality.

What to do?

Re: Civil Liberties Groups Speak Out Against CISPA in Lead Up to Hearings

#7

Post by ori_b »

nlh wrote: post #5

One of the biggest (and most frustrating) problems with the legislative process is that the people who really want this to go through KNOW that we - "the masses" - eventually start to suffer from "protest exhaustion". They can propose a bill - we can rally our troops and get on TV and black out Wikipedia and do 100 interviews and maybe - just maybe - we can kill it. The first time. And maybe the second time. And mayb…

Go on the offensive. Instead of just fighting to kill legislation like CISPA, lobby for legislation that will guarantee the freedom of the internet. That will unequivocally protect people's liberties on (and off) the internet.

Re: Civil Liberties Groups Speak Out Against CISPA in Lead Up to Hearings

#8

Post by unix-dude »

nlh wrote: post #5

One of the biggest (and most frustrating) problems with the legislative process is that the people who really want this to go through KNOW that we - "the masses" - eventually start to suffer from "protest exhaustion". They can propose a bill - we can rally our troops and get on TV and black out Wikipedia and do 100 interviews and maybe - just maybe - we can kill it. The first time. And maybe the second time. And mayb…

I really don't think these kinds of bills will end until there is an amendment passed expressly guarenteeing rights relating to internet (or, perhaps more broadly, network) freedom.

In fact, I doubt even that will stop these kinds of laws from being introduced. However, it will give a firm and easy foothold to dismissing them. Similarly, it will become that much easier to retroactively have them removed if they violate an amendment.

The exact text of this kind of amendment would be difficult to craft, frankly, I'm not a lawyer, I have no idea where or how to start crafting this. However, I do fully believe this is the ultimate winning endgame for this kind of legislation.

We need a "legal hacker" a la Richard Stallman to craft something like this.

Re: Civil Liberties Groups Speak Out Against CISPA in Lead Up to Hearings

#10

Post by Cieplak »

Supporters include companies like AT&T, Facebook, IBM, Intel, Oracle Corporation, Symantec, Verizon, and Microsoft.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyber_Intelligence_Sharing_and_...

I'm envisioning a web dashboard that lets federal agents do fuzzy queries on individuals, to see all the sites visited, emails sent, web searches, browsing habits, etc, from all the IP addresses used by the given individual in the past several years. The system would aggregate information gathered from ISPs and web companies. The government can already get anything they want from an ISP or web company, but they have to do it on a case by case basis and it is probably annoying to correlate information across sources. In the future, I imagine that a federal agent can go to his big brother dashboard, type in a name, and have immediate access to all sorts of information gathered from credit card companies, search providers, ISPs, telecoms.

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