Wrote this when I thought CISPA had no chance of passing. Just put up the longer version of the interview I did weeks ago about my inspiration for writing the novel. My editor cut the CISPA stuff out of the first video because it was for the Inkubate Voices Youtube Page and needed to fit into 3mins. This other version is still cut down, you can tell. Except for now it all feels kinda pointed. It starts at 2:55 mins in. Hoping CISPA goes the way of SOPA with a huge online protest. If you haven't signed the petition yet, it only takes a minute and you could change the course of history. Do it for yourself, your children, and the future of privacy and open thought. It was a very, very tragic week for a lot of people. Just blow after blow. I'm sorry to burden anyone with more, I truly am, but I'm just so disheartened. Been up for days, writing. I just don't know what more to do.
The link I do, thanks so much for asking. CLICK HERE TO STOP THE CYBER INTELLIGENCE SHARING PROTECTION ACT, The U.S. law that would turn Google, Facebook, and Twitter into legally immune government spies.
so a private firm, under CISPA, can look at the current thread here about terrorism, pick out anybody who remotely looks like he/she has terrorist sympathy and pass their details over to the govt without the poster ever even knowing. This poster is then the target of anti-terror agencies and can or will be "intervieweed". Scary stuff...
Right? Honestly, the fact that it's come to this, that government agencies feel the need to "babysit" our every action.... There's a certain level of trust that comes with American Citizenship. The fact that none of our pithy thoughts and comments will be free and open, that they could be confiscated and altered and viewed and stored and collected against us, is so troubling and so against everything the 4th Amendment was put in place to protect. It breaks my heart.
But it died in the Senate last year, and it is not expected to pass the Senate this year, either. But even if it does, the White House has said it will veto it. Still, it is of course, troublesome that it keeps coming up, and that it got as far as it did.
The only reason SOPA didn't pass was because of public outrage. Just ask the people who fought to bring attention to it. Just ask Aaron's family. Just ask his friends. There is a LOT of money and a LOT of special interest behind it. SOPA AND PIPA were billed as "stop piracy" acts, and backed by huge Recording/Film companies. And we all know what happens when there are enough ppl with enough influence: our voice gets squashed in the cash grab. The latest vote for CISPA in The House was 248 ayes. I won't say whether the majority were Dem. or Rep. You can probably guess pretty accurately yourself. *cough*
OK, this CISPA is all new to me (in Europe), I'm just wondering where up the ladder it is before its passed into law. Is it true to say at this moment it has been passed by the house and will now land on Obama's desk for a rubber stamp or a veto and that's the end (or start) of it? I see 92 democrats voted for it which might sway the White House...
It has to pass the Senate before going to Obama. The Senate did not pass it last year. http://www.mediaite.com/online/cispa-reasons-to-worry/ But that certainly does not mean that we should not express our displeasure or that we don't need to rally people around its defeat. When big corporate money is behind something, they won't give up easily, and once something they want is entrenched it's even harder to reverse it.
And as ChicagoLiz said, it should die in the Senate thanks to the POTUS threatening a veto. That's how PIPA/SOPA died. It'll be back. Right now ppl are lobbying for political leaders more in tune with the needs of aggressive data-collection companies. Here's hoping they never get one in the big, bill-signing seat.
So big corps like Microsoft, Google, Facebook etc want this bill passed and Obama at present is dismissing it? has promised to veto it? But if they really want it, they can apply pressure by threatening to move jobs, cut donations to Democrats etc - why do they want it so badly? Do they get a kickback for every name they hand over?
There a lot of separate, distinct interest groups with different goals, but most fear these groups are fueled by money and data collection to use for select advertising. They want to know what you 'like', what you buy, what you think etc. They want to know how to reach you more effectively. Of course, all of this invasion of privacy and civil liberty is hidden beneath the talks about piracy and cyber attacks on huge, almost impenetrable networks.
if i had the funds, i'd send a copy of '1984' to every single member of congress and all who lobby for passage of more privacy-invasive intelligence gathering against their fellow citizens... they seem to be overlooking the fact that their own lives and those of all their family members, friends and acquaintances will also be under the lens of scaremongers like the late joseph mccarthy! and is there a single person in this country who has never said anything that could be misconstrued as 'treasonous' by someone who sees a threat in every word and a terrorist under every rock? "Big Brother is Watching YOU!"
Here you go mamma - its under free license and available free here - note - not a pirate - free license http://www.planetebook.com/1984.asp free free free
What's worrying is that it passed the House by a lot of votes. I believe CISPA got something like 250 votes last time, and this time they got 288. I do believe, however, that it will not pass the Senate (and it certainly won't pass the White House). The bill is basically the same as the one last time and only has a few minor changes. I'm actually not that surprised that CISPA has so much support. There have been so many cases where the right to privacy has been violated. For example, the NSA collects and stores everyone's emails so that security officials can look through them if they need to (i.e., you commit a crime or do something the government considers wrong).
Very true. Google monitors EVERYTHING you do. EVERYTHING is stored, even by keyword. Even without committing a crime you can be violated. Mention your friends coming divorce? Start getting bombarded with browser ads for divorce lawyers in your area. The implications of thought-monitoring are truly terrifying. Someone saying something you don't agree with? BLOCK ALL ACCESS. Today, the net (barely) belongs to the people, for information, communication, education, social functions etc. I can write something that thousands EVEN millions of like-minded people can see and share. There's so much power in that. It won't be that way always, we know, but that right needs to be safe-guarded from the hands of people who'd like to use that power for ill.
AH, you mean they just want to make it official because like you say - they already do it! Google Earth got busted all over Europe for logging into people's wifis, collecting passwords, data etc when they're little cars were driving round taking pictures / videos of roads. They said it was an accident and that they were sorry...
This is a bit different. CISPA allows internet providers to send data and internet records to the government with your name attached to it. So they can look through personal data to look for security threats, and all this is done without a warrant. A lot of people argue that that this violates the Fourth Amendment (protection from unreasonable searches and seizures), but the Fourth Amendment only applies to the government. The amendment says nothing about private companies gathering and sharing data, which is why the government is using these companies to get the information.
It does violate the 4th Amendment. It just does so through a second party. The information seized still gets to government agencies, and if the government authorizes its seizure, than the person actually doing the seizing is simply semantics. Also, what CISPA is said to be used for is different from what it will actually be used for. The problem is these abuses usually go undetected until it is to late. That's what we're trying to prevent. And, you know, 12yr olds on FB posting something silly and being unlawfully investigated.
It depends on your interpretation of the Fourth Amendment. The private companies aren't obligated or even required to share your data with the government. So if a company passes on your information to the government, it's not considered an unlawful search or seizure. By using a particular company, you, as the customer, are giving tacit consent for the company to (possibly) share the information with the government.
So in essence if you sign up for a facebook page, you are in fact sonsenting to facebook handing over all your personal details including posts, statuses etc? And it sets a precedent that if anything in the constitution prevents the govt from doing something, they just appoint a private company to do it for them and they're in the clear?
I haven't recently checked Facebook's Terms of Service, but whatever's in there is what you've agreed to, provided you consented to it when you signed up, or, when the TOS' were changed you had some ability to opt out and decline to use their service further. The expectation of privacy would come into play here. This is a rapidly evolving area of law and policy.
The law and the US Constitution do have loopholes and/or are open to interpretation in some cases, so it's not surprising that the government tries to exploit them. Facebook claims that it won't hand over any personal info or data, but that's not relevant when it comes to posts and statuses, which are basically public anyways.
They're not public if you've set your privacy settings so that they can only be viewed by friends, and you have a select group of friends. How high the privacy levels are set would play into the reasonable expectation of privacy, so I'm sure that will at the very least, be argued.
Of course it passed the House, The House wants it in and the Senate doesn't. Why else do you think the Senate vetoed it last year? We have to fight i agree, but you guys act like it's already passed into law. This is just like Gun control with multiple attempts and the same results. As long as we fight nothing will change that.
