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New CISPA Cybersecurity Bill Even Worse Than SOPA 234

An anonymous reader writes "As congressmen in Washington consider how to handle the ongoing issue of cyberattacks, some legislators have lent their support to a new act that, if passed, would let the government pry into the personal correspondence of anyone of their choosing. This is SOPA being passed in smaller chunks... 'H.R. 3523, a piece of legislation dubbed the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (or CISPA for short) has vague definitions that could allow Congress to circumvent existing exemptions to online privacy laws and essentially monitor, censor and stop any online communication that it considers disruptive to the government or private parties.'"
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New CISPA Cybersecurity Bill Even Worse Than SOPA

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  • by nurb432 ( 527695 ) on Saturday April 07, 2012 @02:38PM (#39608241) Homepage Journal

    You can only slow it down as this train is being driven by the federal government with virtually unlimited power, money, and time.. All this stuff ( and more ) will eventually pass and our digital freedom goes out the door.

    Just a matter of time. Enjoy it while it lasts.

    • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 07, 2012 @02:45PM (#39608295)

      Yup, and even if they can't slip it past the public eye, all they need to do is attach it as a rider to the We Love America And The Troops And Kittens Act Of 2013 and it'll pass unanimously.

      • And any president who would dare to veto it would be quickly impeached.

      • by edb ( 87448 ) on Sunday April 08, 2012 @12:35AM (#39610777)

        Unrelated amendments should not be allowed to be attached to any proposed legislation. This kind of nonsense is and always has been an abuse of the system, and has been exploited by both parties forever.

        Congress could very easily amend its rules to prohibit unrelated riders to legislation. But since congress-critters are the very animals that benefit from the hidden sleight-of-hand, it's unlikely they would take this course on their own.

        We can't even get this done in California, where the Initiative Process lets anything get on the ballot. How can we possibly get this idea passed at the Federal level?

    • Conflicted (Score:5, Insightful)

      by zugmeister ( 1050414 ) on Saturday April 07, 2012 @02:47PM (#39608305)
      On one hand I want to scream at your horrible cynicism and condemn your point of view. On the other hand I think you're completely correct.
    • by TheGratefulNet ( 143330 ) on Saturday April 07, 2012 @02:48PM (#39608311)

      agreed, its only a matter of 'which year' is the actual death of the free internet. free as in freedom; I don't give a rat's as about money matters, in this context.

      pressure will not stop and sooner or later, we'll lose what we have become used to. we've had some good internet days during the last decade or two; but the government AND big business have teamed up to ruin it.

      remember that. remember who really ruined things.

      darknets will be the only thing left for truly freedom-based communications.

      what a world we have created; or allowed to grow in this direction. so sad that 'money and power is all that matters'.

      • 'that year' has already passed. All that is left is the "I will make it legal" stage of the empire.
      • by EdIII ( 1114411 ) on Saturday April 07, 2012 @03:29PM (#39608547)

        agreed, its only a matter of 'which year' is the actual death of the freedom

        FTFY.

        Freedom is not good for the 1%. They have gone by different names in the past of course. It is a cycle. The 1% grows through abuse after abuse, and gradual poolings of influence and resources.

        Eventually they will push it too far and either 1) vastly lower their own standards of living by taking out society with it, at which time they tend to migrate somewhere else (like a virus) or 2) society rears up and kills the fuckers.

        Either way, we all end up bloody, a lot of drama, and then come the speeches about how we are going to create a new society in which the past will not repeat itself.

        Animal Farm is not a book. It is simple observation of repeating patterns.

        • by Roogna ( 9643 )

          Actually if they really looked at things, which they don't, I don't think it's good for the %1 at all to suppress freedom. By all rights the ultra wealthy that have arisen from within the "free" world are more wealthy and powerful than any dictator or tyrant of history. Freedom of the masses has only actually raised ALL classes up further. This newfound desire to push the middle classes and poor down will most likely only result in the %1 losing massive amounts of their own wealth and power as well.

          • Actually if they really looked at things, which they don't, I don't think it's good for the %1 at all to suppress freedom.

            It all depends on how they got their money and power. If they got it by producing the best things that people want, then it's not good for them. But if they got their money by regulating away their competitors, enriching themselves through subsidies, or empowering themselves through controlled media then it's in their best interests to restrict freedom. Allowing Internet freedom could threaten their guaranteed profits (by circumventing restrictive copyrights and patents) or threaten their power to influence

        • Freedom is not good for the 1%.

          Freedom is only bad for the elite when they are decadent. While the elite is ascending, it is quite good for them.

      • by roman_mir ( 125474 ) on Saturday April 07, 2012 @03:57PM (#39608705) Homepage Journal

        remember that. remember who really ruined things.

        - I always remember WHO really ruined the things - those who asked government for bread and circuses and told it that it could do anything as long as it delivered those things.

        • And no mod points when I really need them. Very, very well said, sir.
        • by HiThere ( 15173 )

          Depends on how you figure it. You could blame Abe Lincoln, or you could blame the law clerk who wrote up the decision of Union Pacific vs. The United States. Good arguments could be made in either case, and in either case they were just reinforcing trends that were already present.

        • And to further abuse the train metaphor...
          the gravy train for the bread and circuses, i.e. the plunder of the rest of the planet, is quickly running out. But really don't mind me, just go back to your TV and cheez doodles. I'm sure that next shiny thing will make you feel all better.

        • Exactly. The only reason the content industry can push this through is because they keep trying, and the rest of us (who rallied against SOPA) eventually give up and don't care.

          You need to push back every time. Because they have the right to keep pushing their opinion, like anyone else.
      • by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Saturday April 07, 2012 @04:40PM (#39608983) Homepage

        pressure will not stop and sooner or later, we'll lose what we have become used to. we've had some good internet days during the last decade or two; but the government AND big business have teamed up to ruin it.

        Pardon me for saying it, but I've heard the doomsday prediction that the "wild wild west" days of the Internet is coming to a close now since shortly after I got on in the 90s. Double that after 9/11. P2P was going to die after Napster and torrents were going to die after Suprnova and TPB and most recently file hosting was to die with Megaupload. I don't see that any of that has happened. The music industry has given up DRM protection, the video industry is still in denial but BluRay looks to be practically broken so 1080p content will be on P2P for the foreseeable future and we still got root on our PCs and now on Android on the mobile. The world is not full of Trusted Computing and Remote Attestation to get on the Internet that was supposed to be "imminent".

        Their legal campaigns have also honestly not scared many, they're consistently meeting opposition in the courts and so are all their "graduated response" aka "three strikes, you're out" laws except France who surrenders as usual. They can't significantly increase the chance of getting caught - particularly with the explosion it people file sharing - and they won't get public support for the death penalty for file sharing. It's gone beyond the point where they can effectively combat in the courts and people generally react badly to that kind of arbitrary, excessive punishment to the small minority that does get caught.

        I honestly think they're losing year for year, with a population that is less and less likely to accept these restrictions. They still haven't "tamed" the first generation of online people and for each year a year of young people can vote and old people die out. It takes a long, long time - from first vote to average life span we're talking 60 years or so and we're maybe 15 years into it since Internet got "mainstream". If there was an election today in Germany the Pirate Party would enter parliament (they've already entered two state parliaments), no offense to my neighbors Sweden but that's a 8-9x bigger country and a leading force in the EU, far stronger than two MEPs in the European Parliament. Meanwhile bandwidth gets faster and cheaper, software gets smarter most bills to store traffic data has died on the drawing board.

        My impression is also that more than more places are offering customary wifi service, go into any coffee shop, burger joint, pizza place, gas station, buses, trains, airports, airplanes, hotels, motels or pretty much any company office and they have a wifi for you. True, the number of open home wifis may have declined somewhat but overall I'd say your options are more not fewer. Not to mention that with faster connections even using proxies and whatnot slowing them down you still get decent speeds, the content you want is relatively constant in size. Currently I have 60/60 Mbit and in all honestly (and my inner geek screams to accept this) I'd have zero use for a 1000 Mbit line. Okay I'd have to wait a few seconds shorter on the occasions that I do wait but my total downloads would probably not go up at all.

        • by Thing 1 ( 178996 )

          Okay I'd have to wait a few seconds shorter on the occasions that I do wait but my total downloads would probably not go up at all.

          Exactly: there is a limit to the speed at which you can consume it. Granted, there may be an "initial hoarding experience" but after you've spent a few thousand on hard drives that keep dying, you'll realize that it mostly makes sense to hoard at the rate at which you can realistically consume (and also, evaluate and discard -- hoarding has its price as well).

    • End of the cloud (Score:5, Insightful)

      by xtal ( 49134 ) on Saturday April 07, 2012 @02:49PM (#39608321)

      Laws like this are the defacto end of cloud computing if you have an obligation to protect your data.

      Or rather.. and end to it in the USA.

      Next up; crypto is for terrorists and child pornographers!

      • by Teun ( 17872 )
        I'm using OwnCloud [owncloud.org], a nice little KDE project that through WebDav even works on Windows and I'm sure my data stays out of the US or any other government controlled server.
        • by nzac ( 1822298 )

          Seriously? the project is neither little or KDE, it's has first-class multi platform support. I'm guessing you mean it has a QT client with KDE integration.

        • That page needs to explain what the hell the software does. And should do that in big letters, at the page you linked, not after you click a button.

          Really, I've tried to discover, and all I can say is that it does file and photo synchronization with your phone. I'm not even sure if it does something else.

    • 1- get 10,000 people together. 2- they agree to vote as a block. 3- tell congress critter pass this law and you get the votes. money isn't the only way to win, you can get the same results with voting blocks.
    • by jhoegl ( 638955 )
      Perhaps, or perhaps this was inevitable. One can draw direct parallels of crimes between the 1800s- and now and internet crimes.
      Do I like that a non-regulated entity, such as the government which can claim all sorts of reasons to keep information and secrets, has access to this information?
      Nope
      Do I have a choice?
      Yes. I can stop using the internet, or limit my actions on the internet so that we revert back to the 1990s. I mean, it is illegal for the government to open my mail.
      And even though we as norm
      • by Znork ( 31774 ) on Saturday April 07, 2012 @03:32PM (#39608563)

        Once they have the electronic prescedent they will consider physical mail and media ways to circumvent the 'legitimate' surveillance of the information interchange system. Expect to get it opened.

        It's painful that we'll get the slide into totalitarianism in our lifetime. Perhaps it's time to stop fighting it and join up; if we rush it along we can get through the party-with-paramilitary wing stage and grind the populace under the jackboots for a dozen years, then into the total war stage in a dozen years, get a collapse and revolution and then Never Again for another fifty years.

        And hey, totalitarian imagery has it's charm.

      • I mean, it is illegal for the government to open my mail.

        And who delivers the mail for you?

        Q.E.D.

    • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 07, 2012 @02:59PM (#39608381)

      The way to fight legal snooping isn't to fight each and every snooping bill. Eventually one will pass. The way is to make a law saying the oppposite, a guarantee of privacy bill. Offense>defense.

      • Ultimately, a constitutional amendment may be needed.

        "Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of access to the Internet as a whole or in part, nor abridging freedom of site creation or inclusion in a naming scheme. The right of the people to secure their personal information, physical and non-physical correspondence and Internet traffic from unreasonable search shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing
    • What we should probably look into is getting a constitutional amendment put into place that explicitly protects rights. Otherwise, it is only a matter of time before laws are put into place that take away our freedom.
    • Surrender Monkeys (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Phoenix666 ( 184391 ) on Saturday April 07, 2012 @04:21PM (#39608893)

      Guys, let's stop thinking like Surrender Monkeys when it comes to SOPA and the government. Congressmen are just politicians and almost without exception very stupid people. They make knee-jerk decisions based on how many drinks lobbyists bought them at the bar the night before. But they are most definitely very susceptible to the prospect of pitchfork-waving crowds, eager to nail their hides to the barn door.

      Look at what happened with the last SOPA showdown. The backlash was so severe and massive that Congress was practically pissing itself to run away from that bill. We, by their standards, melted their phone lines and crashed their Blackberries.

      Last time we had Google and Wikipedia and other high-traffic sites leading the charge, but we can't count on them doing it again next time or to not make a deal with Hollywood/the RIAA.

      We can create the perception of a groundswell preemptively. We can give them a taste of their own medicine preemptively, the very same medicine they would foist on us. If they want to subject us to crap like this, let's hijack their individual Blackberries and let them feel what it's like to have this done to them by anonymous strangers.

      Honestly when I read sentiments like, "Oh well, the government is going to screw us no matter what we do so let's give up now," it reminds me of that scene from Swingers

      Trent: You know what you are? You're like a big bear with claws and with fangs...
      Sue: ...big fucking teeth, man.
      Trent: Yeah... big fuckin' teeth on ya'. And she's just like this little bunny, who's just kinda cowering in the corner.
      Sue: Shivering.
      Trent: Yeah, man just kinda... you know, you got these claws and you're staring at these claws and your thinking to yourself, and with these claws you're thinking, "How am I supposed to kill this bunny, how am I supposed to kill this bunny?"
      Sue: And you're poking at it, you're poking at it...
      Trent: Yeah, you're not hurting it. You're just kinda gently batting the bunny around, you know what I mean? And the bunny's scared Mike, the bunny's scared of you, shivering.
      Sue: And you got these fucking claws and these fangs...
      Trent: And you got these fucking claws and these fangs, man! And you're looking at your claws and you're looking at your fangs. And you're thinking to yourself, you don't know what to do, man. "I don't know how to kill the bunny." With *this* you don't know how to kill the bunny, do you know what I mean?

      For pete's sake, people, we're the people who run the central nervous system of the world. How is it that we psych ourselves out over stuff like this? We should be able to mold the government like putty. And it would help that every time we send them a message we put a common tagline like "Free America!" so that they understand it's a spontaneous expression from the electorate that they're fucking up and better straighten up and fly right.

    • by rvw ( 755107 )

      You can only slow it down as this train is being driven by the federal government with virtually unlimited power, money, and time.. All this stuff ( and more ) will eventually pass and our digital freedom goes out the door.

      Just a matter of time. Enjoy it while it lasts.

      I just read an article [volkskrant.nl] in the Dutch newspaper De Volkskrant about a 17 year old that hacked into the Netherlands biggest phone provider. He tells about two FBI officers being permanently stationed at the Dutch national cybercrime team. He tells it as if it helps the Dutch, but I'm pretty sure it will help the US more. "Our" digital freedom? Even in the EU - it's gone!

    • by PopeRatzo ( 965947 ) on Saturday April 07, 2012 @06:12PM (#39609431) Journal

      You can only slow it down as this train is being driven by the federal government with virtually unlimited power, money, and time..

      The "federal government" isn't writing these bills, the corporations are. And with the new unlimited power to influence elections, only pro-corporate candidates will hold office. These laws are written in secret, by unknown people, and passed in the dark of night.

      If you look at the one thing that has changed in the past 80 years, making the government's power onerous, it has been the growing influence of corporations, not just in national elections, but at every level of government down to the school board. I only recently learned that corporate money, Citizens United-style, is not being put into school board elections in parts of the US.

      You can limit the power of government all you want, and it's not going to change a thing. We'll just end up dealing with private police, accountable to no one but unelected (and unelectable) corporate entities. You have to know your enemy, and the enemy is the corporatist.

      My theory is easily testable: pass public funding of elections, amend the constitution to change "person" to "natural person". Codify "corporations are not people" and "money is not speech" and I believe we'd go a long way toward rolling back the most onerous aspects of what is currently being called the "too-powerful government".

      You know, we could also make a huge difference if we just started showing up, in numbers too big to hide in "free speech zones", and started scaring the shit out of the people who are elected.

      It's impossible to scare a corporations when we're not even customers of many of the most powerful corporations. But it's relatively easy to scare an elected official, just by showing up. Not signing online petitions. Not blogging about it. Not forwarding angry emails, but by getting up, getting out of the house and go stand in front of the buildings where these politicians do their business.

    • You can only slow it down

      Exactly....which is why this legislation is pointless. The wheels of freedom are already turning world-wide.

      Armies cannot stop an idea whose time has come.

      • Armies cannot stop an idea whose time has come.

        You mean freedom? It's time has come... and gone. It got started during the enlightenment, had its heyday in the 19th century, battled totalitarianism in the 20th... and having apparently beat it, collapsed like a bee colony early in the 21st. It appears a kindler and gentler authoritarianism is the best we can hope for. Those world-wide wheels of "freedom" you refer to are actually the wheels of Islamic theocratic totalitarianism, one of the poorer outcome

    • You can only slow it down as this train is being driven by the federal government with virtually unlimited power, money, and time.. All this stuff ( and more ) will eventually pass and our digital freedom goes out the door.

      And yet for all it's great power and resources the federal government, like all governments, is a complex, inefficient and incompetent bureaucracy. They've made their laws and imposed their restrictions, now let them try and enforce them. History suggests that they will, at best, be only partially successful. Meanwhile, the federal government, with it's massive debts, wars and the looming entitlements crisis, will soon tire of playing rent-a-cop to Hollywood and the copyright cartels.

    • I wonder.. how about everyone who would class themselves as a consumer and victim in such contexts band together, form a 'corporation of the people', pool their money and begin lobbying themselves
      • We might not have a country any more but we can have a corporation, which is apparently more powerful these days anyway. If you can't beat them, join them? :P
  • by __aawavt7683 ( 72055 ) on Saturday April 07, 2012 @02:45PM (#39608293) Journal

    "This is SOPA being passed in smaller chunks."

    So long as all law is made solely to restrict people and _never_to recagnize rights or prevent abuses such as this, it will just be attempt after attempt until a given law passes. It is absolutely inevitable.

    Congress must enact law that supercedes any prior or later law indicating that personal communications CANNOT be intercepted with anything short of a court order. This, for the various things that are trying to be passed now. Only when they have to fight for the revokation of these protective laws before they can bribe their desired laws into affect will we be in any way safe.

    But it'll never happen.

    • Congress must enact law that supercedes any prior or later law indicating that personal communications CANNOT be intercepted with anything short of a court order.

      We wish. Too bad the checks and balances system doesn't include a way for the people to have a say in what lawmakers do...oh wait -- voting! Damn it, that was our "balance"? Too bad the ineffectiveness of that wasn't foreseen. 'Course it would have taken foreseeing 21st century news networks and an amalgamation of other influences to politics to understand how voting being the only power "We The People" wield falls short.

      ...I guess we still have protests (lol).

      • Perhaps we can agree that voting works fine... it's the people doing the voting that are fucking broken.

        "Oprah says you're a good person if you vote this way!", and "Glenn Beck says you're an enemy of the state unless you vote this way!", wouldn't matter much if people weren't so lazy and uninterested as to reduce national politics to a stupid sporting event.

        • by RussR42 ( 779993 )
          I'm not sure if I can agree with that... How often do you hear "I'm voting for x so that y doesn't win" or that voting 3rd party is a waste of your vote? Voting to choose between two candidates that will do the same thing doesn't really "work fine."

          Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos!

          • Again, that sounds like a deficiency with the voters, not the voting bit of checks and balances.

          • I wore my Ron Paul shirt to McDonalds today. One guy asked me, "Who is Ron Paul?" I thought he was fucking with me, but he genuinely didn't know.

        • by Charliemopps ( 1157495 ) on Saturday April 07, 2012 @04:58PM (#39609083)
          That's just silly. You have NO options when you vote in our 2 party system. Glen Beck and Oprah serve to focus your attention on non-issues, get your riled up about them so you'll participate in a completely meaningless process. The 2 parties have the entire system fixed so that no 3rd party can get involved in any way. They'd have you believe the most important topics of the day are completely pointless issues that no-one can do anything about, like "Jobs" There isn't a president in history that's "created" a Job. Who can we vote for that wont raise our taxes to even more ridiculous heights? Who can we vote for that wont invade yet another 3rd world country? Who can we vote for that wont have a whose-who of special interest groups visiting their office daily? The only special interest group they should be listening to is the constituency that elected them to office.

          If you're voting for Republicans or Democrats, YOU are the problem.
          • by tbird81 ( 946205 ) on Saturday April 07, 2012 @05:14PM (#39609157)

            As a non-American, I always wonder how I'd vote.

            You've got one party full of fundamentalist Christians wanting to control how other people live their lives. On the other side you've got a bunch of pretend-Christians, who'll let media companies get whatever they want, maintain wars, spend money bailing out big-business, and doing the same as a other team except spending more money in the process.

            If I only had the choice between those two, I'd vote Dems (because they seem slightly less religious). But I'd vote for a third party.

            It may seem like a wasted vote, but the real wasted votes are for the Democrats or Republicans - doesn't matter which you chose, it's a waste.

          • I suspect we feel about the same on it. I'm aggravated by the situation as it is, but it seems like something that wouldn't be broken if you could count on the voters to act more rationally.

            Though I agree, you can't. So I guess I'll concede that the system itself is broken, if only in that it relies on people making decisions that are in their own best interest.

            Unfortunately, even that leaves us with, "What better alternative exists that wouldn't also rely on people making good decisions?" Assuming, of c

          • by dkleinsc ( 563838 ) on Saturday April 07, 2012 @05:54PM (#39609333) Homepage

            There isn't a president in history that's "created" a Job.

            You're mostly right, except for this part. Any time a president pushes through a bill that boosts either direct or indirect federal hiring, he creates a job. For instance, when Franklin Roosevelt created the CCC, he most definitely created jobs. When Ronald Reagan put significant cash into missile defense, even though nothing worked it still created jobs.

          • by Thing 1 ( 178996 )

            Who can we vote for that wont invade yet another 3rd world country?

            While I agree with everything else you wrote, and also the fact that we attack other sovereign nations, I take exception with "3rd world country". I've met and married some people from the third world, and they have brains just like the rest of us; they learn mathematics just like the rest of us; and they have hopes, fears, dreams, and tears like the rest of us. It's the US government (and actors within the US, perhaps not completely the gov) that created the labels "first world" and "third world" (I find

            • (I find it odd that we rarely talk about a "second world").

              That's because the Second World aka the USSR collapsed 20 years ago.

        • by Qzukk ( 229616 )

          wouldn't matter much if people weren't so lazy and uninterested as to reduce national politics to a stupid sporting event.

          Hey now, we work hard to make sure the guy who will vote the right way on abortion makes it into office. Freedoms? Wars? Deficits? That's all unimportant crap.

    • by c0lo ( 1497653 )

      "This is SOPA being passed in smaller chunks."

      So long as all law is made solely to restrict people and _never_to recagnize rights or prevent abuses such as this, it will just be attempt after attempt until a given law passes. It is absolutely inevitable.

      The very reason the people should use whatever legal influence they have to show support in delaying (if not stopping) such laws, every time they try to pass them:
      petition at Electronic Frontier Foundation [eff.org]
      petition at avaaz [avaaz.org]

      It may appear that you also missed the boat in signing a petition [whitehouse.gov] on "We the people" (I can't, not being in US). Maybe it's time to start a new one and promote it better?

  • Of course (Score:4, Insightful)

    by dbet ( 1607261 ) on Saturday April 07, 2012 @02:50PM (#39608331)
    The oligarchies of the world do a fair job of controlling media, but they can't control blogs or twitter. They need governments to make sure they can do this for them.

    I think we're on the edge of a change in how modern democracies work. They can't continue on their current form. They never really did a good job of representing the people anyway, it's just that since the proliferation of the internet, everyone is much more aware of this fact.
    • Re:Of course (Score:4, Insightful)

      by FudRucker ( 866063 ) on Saturday April 07, 2012 @02:56PM (#39608367)
      RE:"since the proliferation of the internet, everyone is much more aware of this fact."

      yup, the cat is out of the bag, I wonder how civilization will react when the government starts destroying free speech on the internet in their lame attempt at putting the cat back in the bag.
    • The real question is how far are people willing to go to do something about it? Will it be truly peaceful, or will we end up having to get into a civil war with our own military first?
      • Re:Of course (Score:5, Insightful)

        by dbet ( 1607261 ) on Saturday April 07, 2012 @03:01PM (#39608397)
        During the enlightenment, we had a period of about 100 years where Europe went from almost all monarchy to almost all democracy. How many of those were peaceful? Surely some of them.

        Also, information works both ways. If you know your citizens are on the eve of mass riots, you might get radical changes before any actual violence begins.
        • Also, information works both ways. If you know your citizens are on the eve of mass riots, you might get radical changes before any actual violence begins.

          Heh you put it very well indeed. I never thought about that side of the coin really. If it can be stated and shown without major incident, you may be right. Best of all, even the possibility of that is something that shows how far we've gotten. At least there is a chance.

      • "how far are people willing to go to do something about it?"
        Problem is most people are unaware, less us slashdotters, or don't care or both. There are more of them than there are us. And by the time they figure it out the horse has already left the barn. Don't forget too, people are sheep.
    • by c0lo ( 1497653 )

      The oligarchies of the world do a fair job of controlling media, but they can't control blogs or twitter. They need governments to make sure they can do this for them.

      twitter is not representative (thus rather irrelevant). Let me demonstrate by googling on:

      CISPA [google.com] - 1540 results
      SOPA [google.com] - About 673,000 results
      lady gaga [google.com] - About 5,020,000 results
      bieber [google.com] - About 8,030,000 results
      pr0n [google.com] (about 42,100 results) + porn [google.com] (about 2,070,000 results) - an "total about" of 2,112,100 (what???).

      Everybody knows Internet is for porn [youtube.com] and the rule 34. Now, you cannot argue that porn is less popular than Lady Gaga or Bieber - therefore Twitter must be non-representative.

      Now, I tell you w

      • just sign the petitions on EFF [eff.org] and avaaz.org [avaaz.org] . Even better, open or sign a petitions on the We, the people [whitehouse.gov] site.

        Won't the DHS put me on some kind of list for being a "domestic extremist"?

  • by Anonymous Coward

    http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.R.3523:

    Note that the bill simply allows the national intelligence community to provide classified threat information to ISP's. There is no provision in the bill for the ISP's to provide any information back to the government.

    Now, it is co-sponsered by that idiot bachmann, but that doesn't make it ipso facto bad.

  • ..is eternal vigilance. Did you think they were just pretty words?
  • Fascinating: The government is going to deal with those experiencing fear of loss of privacy & general disgust at the government's actions by granting itself more power, so it can invade the privacy of and engage in various ethnically-questionable / morally-casual actions towards those experiencing fear of loss of privacy & general disgust at the government's actions, so that it can manage their fear & disgust at its actions.

    Gentlemen, I believe we have reached 'equilibrium.'

    • by Thing 1 ( 178996 )

      ethnically-questionable

      I believe you meant "ethically" although upon further inspection, both might work (war in the middle-east generally kills a different ethnic segment of the population).

  • "Vague Definitions" (Score:4, Informative)

    by Cazekiel ( 1417893 ) on Saturday April 07, 2012 @03:27PM (#39608533)

    The word 'vague' in this alone scares me. There was a super-ridiculous kerfluffle in livejournal.com years ago, which is historically noted as 'Strikethrough 2007' to those who were affected by it. One complaint from a religious-based family group, concerned with Harry Potter being portrayed in "precarious positions" both in fanfiction and artwork, sent a ripple-effect through the site. It went from deleting a few users without warning (causing a strikethrough in their username) to a basic witch-hunt, with hundreds of users--some paid accounts, or even those who footed the bill for expensive permanent accounts--being deleted, when most didn't have anything but 'harry potter' and 'fanfiction' listed in their profile's interests section. Very few involved the younger crowd at Hogwarts in sexualized-artwork. Simply implying that you were interested in Potter-based communities (even some not related to the Potter-universe itself) within the site fueled enough panic from the livejournal staff.

    Funniest part was, it was done while The Boss Of Them was out for the weekend. When he returned, he gave massive apologies and reinstated users unfairly deleted. Still, the "event" lingers in the back of everyone's mind five years later.

    • Of course all thees laws are vague, because thees congress critters proudly admit they have no clue how the internet works, both technically and socially. All they have is big media and greedy thugs telling them this is the right thing to do. They look at all the zeros on the checks they receive from said entities and say "Yes they must be correct and the internet is too free and open. My gosh anyone of the %99 can express their opinion! It has no place in our profit driven power hungry society. And this i
      • It reminds me of the movie 'August', wherein 'old money' meets the internet-financial world by the end... only Old Money takes over with finesse and precision. The fact that David Bowie played the ringleader of the company made me cringe and smile evilly at the same time.

  • by idbeholda ( 2405958 ) on Saturday April 07, 2012 @04:27PM (#39608921) Journal
    When legislation like this crops up again, after we, the people have already said "No" emphatically, then the legislators supporting this particular shit show need to be immediately, physically and forcibly removed from any and all offices. Period. There is no interest in national security here, this is merely an attempt to grasp at straws. Seeing this kind of crap being birthed from the loins of political prostitutes (even though they're basically the same thing) honestly makes me ashamed to admit that I live in the United States.

    I'm sure that our forefathers would say the exact same thing. Anyone who genuinely believes that this trainwreck of an idea is a good thing either needs to have their head examined or is being paid by a corporation and/or consortium. Fucking goddamn, this pisses me off.
    • by jez9999 ( 618189 )

      Fucking goddamn, this pisses me off.

      It should be completely predictable. I've said before many times that the US is totally fucked until you somehow overhaul your entire political process. The first step is making people realize this needs to happen, and as long as the people keep calling the US "a democracy", that step hasn't been fulfilled.

  • IP is worthless (Score:4, Insightful)

    by shentino ( 1139071 ) <shentino@gmail.com> on Saturday April 07, 2012 @04:34PM (#39608951)

    All copyrights, patents, and trademarks are used for these days is for Big Business as weapons to skewer and brain-bash people they don't like, be it competition, criticism, or anyone else that doesn't subscribe to whatever dogma is mandated by the company's bottom line. It seems that the fastest way to ruin is to piss off a corporation.

    The stunt that UMG pulled against the Mega Upload video is proof of that, as is the Geohot and Scrolls lawsuits. Both of which by the way were won by big companies with a lot of weight to throw around squashing the little guys with their legal muscles and intimidating them into giving up without a fight.

    Considering that TBP is getting sponsors in record numbers (no pun intended) for its ad banner program I think it's quite clear by now that only abusive companies really have any interest in strengthening IP laws.

  • by alienzed ( 732782 ) on Saturday April 07, 2012 @05:03PM (#39609107) Homepage
    I keep seeing people protesting with huge signs with the words 'Freedom' and 'Liberty' on them. I mean, who buys that BS anymore anyway? There's no such thing as freedom, and 'liberty' in what sense? You can't be completely free and still expect society to be safe, I mean, what about the freedom to kill? The freedom to feed oneself at the expense of another creature or someone else? Hopefully someday we'll have a third party, the Realist party. Until society can handle to not believe in noble lies, we're doomed to mediocrity. On a side note, I thought of a great analogy to show what's wrong with capitalism today. The original expression: If you give a man a fish, you'll feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, you'll feed him for life. The capitalist version: If you sell a man a fish, you'll feed him for a day. If you teach a man to fish, or give a man a fish, you'll go out of business.
  • Move to Amend (Score:5, Informative)

    by Linsaran ( 728833 ) on Saturday April 07, 2012 @05:25PM (#39609209) Homepage

    See, this is what happens when we allow corporations to have a 'voice' in politics by spending money on campaign contributions. A law which was suppressed by overwhelming public opposition (SOPA) can creep back into the system because there are some (arguably powerful) corporations in favor of it.

    I support (along with a lot of other people) amending the constitution to get rid of this kind of loophole. I think the Move To Amend [movetoamend.org] people got the right idea.

    With an amendment like that in place maybe we'd actually see candidates pandering to their constituents instead of whatever corporate interests contributed the most to their campaign fund.

  • Does anyone really believe today that any information that one posts to the internet is confidential?

    It seems to me that internet privacy has been an oxymoron since the earliest days. Why do you think we have technologies like PGP and VPN?

    Does this bill really change anything?

  • What you need to tell our representatives is that this would make a modern day Watergate legal. You need to point out how it could affect them.

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