Senate Makes Another Push for Internet Censorship

From Mother Jones:

This summer, when Edward Snowden dropped his bombshell about PRISM, the NSA's vast Internet spying program, the House had recently passed a bill called the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA). Widely criticized by privacy advocates, CISPA aimed to beef up US cybersecurity by giving tech companies the legal freedom to share even more cyber information with the US government—including the content of Americans' emails, with personal information intact. CISPA supporters, among them big US companies such as Verizon and Comcast, spent 140 times more money on lobbying for the bill than its opponents, according to the Sunlight Foundation. But after Snowden's leaks, public panic over how and why the government uses personal information effectively killed the bill. Now that the dust has settled a bit, NSA director Keith Alexander is publicly asking for the legislation to be re-introduced, and two senators confirmed that they are drafting a new Senate version.

"I am working with Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.) on bipartisan legislation to facilitate the sharing of cyber related information among companies and with the government and to provide protection from liability," Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) told Mother Jones in a statement.

With both Democrat and Republican support, we can safely presume this legislation will be doubly bad.  

Washington Post Pretends Legislative Process Is Not Dominated by Special Interests

The United States federal government is today a wholly owned subsidiary of a handful of powerful corporations.  These corporations own our so-called "elected representatives" and write our laws. Things do not have to be this way, but unfortunately, barring a popular insurrection, things are very unlikely to change anytime in the near future.  From the Washington Post:

Robert Goodlatte (R-Va.), the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, has vowed to conduct a comprehensive review of our nation’s copyright laws to determine whether they are “still working in a digital age.” That’s a long overdue task. But there’s a danger that the process will be dominated by a handful of special interest groups that have long been reflexively hostile to technological progress [emphasis added].

Last year’s defeat of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) caused industry groups to intensify their lobbying efforts. And they haven’t been subtle about it. In the wake of the SOPA defeat, Motion Picture Association of America chairman Christopher Dodd warned legislators: “Don’t ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don’t pay any attention to me when my job is at stake.” . . . 

There's a danger that the process will be dominated by a handful of special interest groups?  What planet is this author from?  It is a veritable certainty that any such process in the US Congress is dominated by a handful of special interest groups.  Pretending otherwise is certainly not helpful.  

CISPA: Your Data Will Be Shared Without a Warrant

From ZDNET:

Major technology and Web companies — not limited to Google, Facebook, Twitter and Microsoft — will not be allowed to promise to protect users' privacy should CISPA pass Congress. For those out of the loop, CISPA will allow private sector firms to search personal and sensitive user data of ordinary U.S. residents to identify this so-called "threat information", and to then share that information with each other and the US government — without the need for a court-ordered warrant. . . . those who signed up to services under the explicit terms that data would not be shared — with perhaps the exception of the U.S. government if a valid court order or subpoena is served — would no longer have such rights going forward.

CISPA: The Government's War on Privacy Continues

From The Guardian:

If you are eligible to vote in the United States, please take a break from whatever you're doing today and call your member of the US House of Representatives. Tell the staff member who answers the phone that you value your privacy. And tell him or her that you are deeply unhappy that the House seems poised to destroy everyone's online – and by extension offline – privacy by passing the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (Cispa) . . . [The bill] invites companies like internet service providers to share information so they can coordinate defenses.

Worthy ideas in the abstract, but horrible in the details: cyber-security is a genuine concern, as we've seen repeatedly. But this bill is easily the worst attack on the open internet since the infamous Stop Online Piracy Act (Sopa), an online censorship bill that was killed in the wake of widespread opposition early last year.  As the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Mark Jaycox put it in an open forum on Reddit last week, here are some of Cispa's consequences:

Companies have new rights to monitor user actions and share data – including potentially sensitive user data – with the government without a warrant.
Cispa overrides existing privacy law, and grants broad immunities to participating companies.

Information provided to the federal government under Cispa would be exempt from the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and other state laws that could otherwise require disclosure (unless some law other than Cispa already requires its provision to the government).

Cispa's authors argue that the bill contains limitations on how the federal government can use and disclose information by permitting lawsuits against the government. But if a company sends information about a user that is not cyberthreat information, the government agency does not notify the user, only the company.

CISPA and the Corporate Lobby for Internet Censorship

Maplight reports that CISPA, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, known to its critics as the internet censorship act, has picked up nearly three dozen co-sponsors in the US House following a corporate lobbying effort of IBM executives to their puppets in the legislature.  From Maplight:

On Monday, the same day that IBM flew nearly 200 executives to Washington D.C. to lobby Congress in support of CISPA, 35 members of the House signed onto the bill as new co-sponsors. Proir to Monday, CISPA had only 2 co-sponsors since being introduced in February.
On Tuesday, the Obama Administration issued a veto threat against the bill in its current form citing privacy concerns.
Data: MapLight analysis of reported contributions to the 35 new CISPA co-sponsors and the entire House from interest groups supporting and opposing CISPA.

• New co-sponsors have received 37 times as much money ($7,311,336) from interests supporting CISPA than from interests opposing ($200,062).
• Members of the House in total have received 16 times as much money ($67,665,694) from interests supporting CISPA than from interests opposing ($4,164,596).

The EFF and the ACLU have organized a campaign to defeat CISPA.  From the EFF:

CISPA is a dangerous "cybersecurity" bill that would grant companies more power to obtain "threat" information (such as from private communications of users) and to disclose that data to the government without a warrant -- including sending data to the National Security Agency.

CISPA was recently reintroduced in the House of Representatives. EFF is joining groups like ACLU and Fight for the Future in combating this legislation.  Last year, tens of thousands of concerned individuals used the EFF action center to speak out against overbroad and ineffective cybersecurity proposals. Together, we substantially changed the debate around cybersecurity in the U.S., moving forward a range of privacy-protective amendments and ultimately helping to defeat the Senate bill.

Congress Gearing Up for Next Attempted Internet Crackdown

From EFF:

On Monday, EFF and over 30 other Internet rights organizations sent a letter to members of Congress demanding they vote no on the "cybersecurity" bill known as CISPA. The letter starts off a week in which Congress will hold three different hearings about CISPA and computer and network security. In addition to the letter, each hearing will provide opportunity to voice many of the bill's problems. We encourage you to join the fight and tell your Representative to say no to CISPA.

In the coalition letter, groups including Mozilla, CDT, ACLU, EFF, and the American Library Association called on representatives to oppose CISPA because of privacy and civil liberties concerns:

CISPA's information sharing regime allows the transfer of vast amounts of data, including sensitive information like internet records or the content of emails, to any agency in the government including military and intelligence agencies like the National Security Agency or the Department of Defense Cyber Command. Once in government hands, this information can be used for undefined 'national security' purposes unrelated to cybersecurity.

CISPA may advance in the House at any time. EFF and other civil liberties groups are ramping up the fight against the bill. We'll be raising more awareness and urging users to speak to their representatives about CISPA's dangers.