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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

#41

Post by dubfan »

rayiner wrote: post #29
dubfan wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The special interests behind legislation like CISPA have professional lobbyists and millions of dollars to pay them. If you're a private citizen and want a law passed at the federal level, you need to have a cute and young white child who died due to something your law legislates against. Otherwise you don't stand a chance of being heard.

That's a bullshit excuse. If you can't raise a few million dollars for your cause, it's probably because nobody gives a shit about your cause. You think we got clean air, clean water, etc, legislation passed because Sierra Club and Earth Justice are rolling in money? No, it's because they have a cause that people care about and passionate volunteers that dedicate their lives to fighting for it. It's not the system's…

They've also got politicians who would love to go to their constituents during campaign season and tell them "Look, I supported clean air!" Contrast this to opposing civil liberties restrictions, which can very easily and effectively be spun by political opponents as leaving America open to terror attacks. Even with the PATRIOT Act, something much more substantial than CISPA, political opposition has been limited to some relatively marginal politicians who are extremely popular in their jurisdictions and not likely to be ousted.

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

#42

Post by wmf »

diminoten wrote: post #36
ericjeepn wrote: post #11

Just tell the gun lobby that if any of the Gun Shops keep an online database of their customers that's subject to the law. No need to worry about a national gun registry, the GOV gets it for free. Get the NRA involved and ALL OF CONGRESS will run screaming about how this goes against the 2nd Amendment.

The Gun Shop would have to volunteer that information to the government according to CISPA, so that wouldn't work.

Political maneuvering has nothing to do with what CISPA actually says (as many others in this thread have pointed out).

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

#43

Post by pdonis »

gojomo wrote: post #19
Cieplak wrote: post #10

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 seve…

Don't forget an "add person to cyber threat watchlist" button! It should automatically advise internet services that a person/account may be trouble, thus granting those private companies the blanket "exemption from liability... for decisions made based on cyber threat information identified, obtained, or shared under this [law]." (That's one of the most concerning vague and elastic provisions in the current proposed…

Are you actually advocating for these, or just trying to point out how extreme the government's powers could be if CISPA were passed?

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

#44

Post by rayiner »

dubfan wrote: post #41
rayiner wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bullshit excuse. If you can't raise a few million dollars for your cause, it's probably because nobody gives a shit about your cause. You think we got clean air, clean water, etc, legislation passed because Sierra Club and Earth Justice are rolling in money? No, it's because they have a cause that people care about and passionate volunteers that dedicate their lives to fighting for it. It's not the system's…

They've also got politicians who would love to go to their constituents during campaign season and tell them "Look, I supported clean air!" Contrast this to opposing civil liberties restrictions, which can very easily and effectively be spun by political opponents as leaving America open to terror attacks. Even with the PATRIOT Act, something much more substantial than CISPA, political opposition has been limited to…

> They've also got politicians who would love to go to their constituents during campaign season and tell them "Look, I supported clean air!"

Because there are people who actually care about clean air.

> Contrast this to opposing civil liberties restrictions, which can very easily and effectively be spun by political opponents as leaving America open to terror attacks.

Supporting environmental legislation is very easily spun by political opponents as costing America jobs.

The amount of political opposition to environmental laws is otherworldly. There are a few companies here and there making money off things like Rapiscanners, but the companies whose profits are hurt by environmental regulations account for trillions in US revenue each year. Everything from Exxon Mobil to small chemical plants with $10 million in revenues. And while "think of 9/11" has a certain impact, it's not only fading but even at it's peak never compared to the visceral cultural opposition towards environmental laws. Industries impacted by environmental laws are literally ways of life in many parts of the country. People in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, etc, fight to allow coal companies to keep poisoning them as part of their cultural heritage.

To put things into context: adding up U.S. box-office, DVD/Blu-Ray/etc, and music (digital and CD) revenues doesn't break $40 billion a year. Apple by itself made more than that last quarter. Exxon by itself makes 10x as much in a year, and there are 8 other petroleum companies in the Fortune 100. But environmentalists somehow manage to get some wins. While tech people whine incessantly about how "the system" is why they can't make any headway against the RIAA/MPAA.

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

#45

Post by AnthonyMouse »

dubfan wrote: post #41
rayiner wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a bullshit excuse. If you can't raise a few million dollars for your cause, it's probably because nobody gives a shit about your cause. You think we got clean air, clean water, etc, legislation passed because Sierra Club and Earth Justice are rolling in money? No, it's because they have a cause that people care about and passionate volunteers that dedicate their lives to fighting for it. It's not the system's…

They've also got politicians who would love to go to their constituents during campaign season and tell them "Look, I supported clean air!" Contrast this to opposing civil liberties restrictions, which can very easily and effectively be spun by political opponents as leaving America open to terror attacks. Even with the PATRIOT Act, something much more substantial than CISPA, political opposition has been limited to…

>Contrast this to opposing civil liberties restrictions, which can very easily and effectively be spun by political opponents as leaving America open to terror attacks.

How is that different from anything else? Pollution controls are painted as "job killing regulation" or "will raise the price of energy" or whatever this year's talking points are.

I kind of get the feeling that the reason things don't get done is only that people think they can't do anything. So they don't write to Congress or protest or donate money to EFF, and then their pessimism becomes self-fulfilling and self-reinforcing.

If you want change then you have to make it happen.

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

#46

Post by diminoten »

wmf wrote: post #42
diminoten wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Gun Shop would have to volunteer that information to the government according to CISPA, so that wouldn't work.

Political maneuvering has nothing to do with what CISPA actually says (as many others in this thread have pointed out).

The bill is too short to lie about what's in it. Anyone with about 5 minutes and a 4th grade reading level can at least muddle through.

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

#47

Post by AnthonyMouse »

sp332 wrote: post #15
ori_b wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Getting such a law passed does nothing to prevent a future law from saying the opposite.

>Getting such a law passed does nothing to prevent a future law from saying the opposite.

What it does is make the proposal for the future law look like a much larger departure from the status quo, which makes it a harder sell. Furthermore, members of Congress don't like to change their positions for a number of reasons relating to both ego and what it allows election opponents to put in political advertisements, so if you can get them on record supporting your cause then you make them less likely to go against you in the future.

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

#48

Post by AnthonyMouse »

snowwrestler wrote: post #22
gojomo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the current barriers to agencies sharing intelligence with private companies? Can you give an anonymized/abstract example, where the FBI/etc might have actionable info about a 'cyber threat', and under current law can't pick up the phone or send an email warning private companies?

Primarily the barrier from government to company was that much of the valuable info was classified. The Obama executive order on cybersecurity created a mechanism to bypass this barrier that is similar to what was in CISPA. So why pass CISPA now? To remove the barrier in the other direction, from company to government. Right now there are interpretations of certain federal laws that say that companies cannot share th…

>In an ideal world you would have a virtuous cycle, where one company stops a threat, sends the critical threat info the government, which shares it with every other company--all basically in real time.

But why does the government need the information at all? Why not have a private consortium of companies who share threat information under NDA (or, for that matter, just allow it to be published), and craft appropriate legislation to allow that?

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

#49

Post by AnthonyMouse »

pasbesoin wrote: post #25
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…

This is part of why I've decided to no longer politically support (vote for, nor contribute to) "the best of a bad lot". Perhaps I'll be "throwing my vote away". Nonetheless, next time around, I'll be choosing from amongst the other choices. For the Federal elections, it's early enough in the cycle that if people start doing this en masse, it might have some real influence.

I keep telling people this, because it can't be emphasized enough: The reason your choice in the general election is between a giant douche and a turd sandwich is that those are the people who win the primaries. If you want to change that, vote in the primaries.

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

#50

Post by tptacek »

diminoten wrote: post #38
halviti wrote: post #3

Obligatory Maddox from SOPA 1 http://thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=pass_sopa

SOPA isn't really related to CISPA all that much, I don't know why people think they're similar.

Because the EFF actively campaigned (dishonestly) against CISPA as a sort of second coming of the objectives of SOPA.
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