Proposed Info Sharing Legislation Could Worsen NSA Surveillance • Hacker News Board

Re: Proposed Info Sharing Legislation Could Worsen NSA Surveillance

#21

Post by MichaelCrawford » Thu, Jun 25, 2015, 9:42 PM UTC

rubbingalcohol wrote: post #7

duaneb wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So, I'm torn. Why does this keep popping up? Constituents may vote, but lobbyists pay the bills.

All the big tech companies want CISA because it legalizes data sharing programs like PRISM. To date, they've been forced to do this for years under Section 702 of FISA, but the whole thing has been in breach of their privacy agreements with customers. Remember when EFF sued AT&T for [letting the NSA wiretap their Internet backbone facilities][1]? Congress killed the lawsuit by retroactively granting immunity under th…

for uncle sam to get a warrant is just dandy but thats not going to protect us from organized crime or the intelligence services of other nations.

We need security that my mother can understand. dad had a top secret clearance so mom understands why she needs to shred paper documents.

ive had no such luck explaining to her how to maintain her privacy with her imac.

Re: Proposed Info Sharing Legislation Could Worsen NSA Surveillance

#22

Post by tzs » Fri, Jun 26, 2015, 12:50 AM UTC

rubbingalcohol wrote: post #20

tzs wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Section 4(d)(2) of _what?_ Section 4(d)(2) of the bill that the article you are commenting on is writing about, S.754, the "Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015".

Section 4(d)(2) requires removal of information that a company "knows at the time of sharing" to be private personal information. That's complete weak sauce. There is tons of leeway here for the government to demand threat indicators that could "accidentally" vacuum up private info without anyone "knowing" about it. And the bill hasn't even gone through committee. If the past is any indication, the GOP will try to st…

I don't see anything in (this version of, anyway) CISA that would let the government demand threat indicators. If the government wants to come demanding companies give them information, they have to turn to other laws for that.

On the Constitutional issue:

> It _is_ an end-run around the Constitution if the data a company provides belongs to an individual and is disclosed without a proper warrant, unless you agree with the statement that "people have no right to privacy in any data held by third party service providers."

People have multiple rights to privacy related to such data. Some come from state law. Some come from federal agencies. Some come from federal legislation. Some come from the Constitution.

The ones from the Constitution protect against government compelling release of the data. They don't protect against the providers deciding on their own to disclose the information to the government (or to the public, or to private parties). If, for instance, PG&E decided to publish a list of its customers along with contact information and energy use records, it would not be violating a Constitutional right to privacy. If the government demanded that PG&E make and turn over such a list, then we've got a Constitutional issue to talk about.

In that hypothetical, PG&E would be violating some of those other rights to privacy that come from state legislation, federal legislation, and agency rules, and would run into a ton of trouble.

Re: Proposed Info Sharing Legislation Could Worsen NSA Surveillance

#23

Post by bediger4000 » Fri, Jun 26, 2015, 7:51 PM UTC

shostack wrote: post #16

bediger4000 wrote: post #4

NSA/FBI surveillance is pretty unpopular - I'm pretty sure that Senator and Representative offices got a ton of calls about it, otherwise the PATRIOT Act section 215 wouldn't have sunsetted, it would have gotten a big sloppy wet rubber stamp. SOPA touched off a big campaign a couple of years ago, CISA gets nearly unanimous bad reviews. So, why does the Senate keep trying to crank up this sort of thing? They need to b…

>Is this whole category of law a place where the DoJ has intercepted enough sketchy conversations that they've got leverage against key Senators and Reps? That's all I can think of too after reading Daniel Suarez' "Influx." With the resources and information at their disposal I would not put it past them to take this approach. That raises the question of how we can change the system if we have to assume some sort of…

Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez obtained this sort of leverage against Representative Jane Harman: http://www.salon.com/2009/04/20/harman/

I was amazed that this story had such short legs. It seems like a big deal to me, a really big deal.

Re: Proposed Info Sharing Legislation Could Worsen NSA Surveillance

#24

Post by shostack » Fri, Jun 26, 2015, 9:43 PM UTC

bediger4000 wrote: post #23

shostack wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Is this whole category of law a place where the DoJ has intercepted enough sketchy conversations that they've got leverage against key Senators and Reps? That's all I can think of too after reading Daniel Suarez' "Influx." With the resources and information at their disposal I would not put it past them to take this approach. That raises the question of how we can change the system if we have to assume some sort of…

Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez obtained this sort of leverage against Representative Jane Harman: http://www.salon.com/2009/04/20/harman/ I was amazed that this story had such short legs. It seems like a big deal to me, a really big deal.

Now just think about how something like the recent government hack[1] would play out on a wider scale.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/06/24/hackers-sto...