Cybersecurity Bill Fails Today In US Senate 72
wiredmikey writes "A development following the recently posted story Senate Cybersecurity Bill Stalled By Ridiculous Amendments — The Cybersecurity Act of 2012 failed to advance in the US Senate on Thursday. The measure was blocked amid opposition from an unusual coalition of civil libertarians — who feared it could allow too much government snooping — and conservatives who said it would create a new bureaucracy. The bill needed 60 votes in the 100-member Senate to advance under rules in the chamber, but got only 52. The failure came despite pleas from Obama and top US defense officials. The US Chamber of Commerce argued that the bill 'could actually impede US cybersecurity by shifting businesses' resources away from implementing robust and effective security measures and toward meeting government mandates.'"
we already got a thread (Score:3, Informative)
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As for the bill itself, I dont know what it is supposed to do. Force companies to make sure their shit is secure?
Businesses can only make it as secure as the latest vulnerability.
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Re:we already got a thread (Score:5, Insightful)
It does nothing to enforce real security. Instead, it enshrines another layer of surveillance and privacy-reduction in law - with an enforcement arm that will be rewarded by stopping "cyber-threats" like using a UK proxy to watch the Olympics online. Then, like under the DMCA you can be treated like a terrorist.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/03/dangerously-vague-cybersecurity-legislation [eff.org]
Re:we already got a thread (Score:4, Insightful)
Did you actually expect the government to improve security? These are the same people who keep telling us that the TSA makes us safer. For the most part, congresspeople don't even understand the most basic aspects of meatspace security. How could they possibly understand cybersecurity, which is orders of magnitude more complex? If you asked all of the U.S. Congress what a buffer overflow is, you would probably have fewer than twenty people who could answer the question, and I would not be entirely surprised if not a single one of them could answer it. And I can just about guarantee that none of them could construct even the most basic threat assessment for even the most simple network protocol.
No, Congress will create an organization whose job it is to understand it, but they'll give it a mission statement that is entirely perpendicular to anything that would actually improve cybersecurity. Then, when things don't improve, they'll say that it needs more funding. All the while, they'll be siphoning off hundreds of millions of dollars to overpriced contractors in their districts so that when they leave the public sector, they'll have cushy consulting jobs waiting for them. Sadly, this is the way Congress usually does things. They don't take the time to understand the issues, and instead let a bunch of lobbyists write laws that almost invariably only serve to make the problem worse.
For this reason, government is almost never the answer to this sort of thing. Industry standards bodies are. Until our congresspeople are clueful enough to understand that cybersecurity is fundamentally a problem caused by bugs in software, not a social problem caused by evil, malicious "hackers", they cannot possibly do anything but cause harm. Improving cybersecurity by trying to catch the hackers is like protecting a chicken coop by trying to catch all the wolves in the country. There will always be more wolves. What the coop needs is not traps, but rather walls and fences. Similarly, the only way government can usefully improve cybersecurity is by hiring computer security experts to serve as a cybersecurity swat team that does nothing but review code and software designs upon request from government agencies, private businesses, and open source projects. That level of scrutiny is useful. Anything else is a waste of time, money, and civil liberties, with no hope whatsoever of positively affecting our nation's cybersecurity.
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As for this quote: "The US Chamber of Commerce argued that the bill 'could actually impede US cybersecurity by shifting businesses' resources away from implementing robust and effective security measures and toward meeting government mandates."
Oh, is that why everyone is getting hacked, because they are putting resour
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Social engineering is, indeed, a social problem, but it isn't specific to cybersecurity. You can do social engineering just as easily by postal mail as email, just as easily by telephone as by IM, etc. The only way to solve it is by convincing people that they need to think before they disclose information.
More importantl
government-paid security pros (Score:2)
"government-paid security pros"
ROTFL
You have got to be kidding. Even if you get a real security pro to work for the government, in 10 years, he/she will be totally out of date and heading an evergrowing empire of unqualified idiots. These bureaucrats will secure their jobs by getting out of the consulting business entirely and writing regulations that they can enforce.
Never start a new government program.
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As for the bill itself, I dont know what it is supposed to do. Force companies to make sure their shit is secure?
The big problem was the ammendments. They had a little bit of everything in there cause it was the last bit of law they were gonna look at before their summer break. So they loaded it up with every pet project of 70 braindead idiots^F^Ffavored son Senators and were surprised when they only got 62 votes to pass this abortion.
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How would one do that? And before you say "you can't have two bullet points in one bill", what about bills that provide a service and a tax to pay for it. Should they be separate? Should there be a vote on each service individually?
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Disallow adding random irrelevant shit to the bill. Anything irrelevant to the original bill, actually.
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The idea that those who believe in small and limited government actually think there should be no government is a common and worn out liberal straw-man argument.
FTFY.
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FTFY
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The idea that those who believe in small and limited government actually think is common
FTFY
hmm, that might be clever, if not so childish and pedantic.
So, what's wrong with preferring small, limited-scope government, as opposed to the ever-expanding, expensive, bloated oppression machine we have now?
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For one thing, nobody is actually in favor of "ever-expanding, expensive, bloated" government.
Well, not when you put it that way.
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And saying that, I'm all in favor of a smaller government. Put it on a diet, liposuction the shit outta it, and let's see how those poor bureaucrats do when they have to work for a living.
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Just keep the government out of the way and the companies themselves will take care of it. No need for worries.
Yes!
We should have let:
Enron take over energy policy,
Madoff take over social security,
Lehman Brothers take over mortgages,
and so on
The free market is perfect and always optimizes (someone's wallet).
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Enron take over energy policy,
You assume we need one, big, monolithic "energy policy." As though a single entity could create an effective policy of that magnitude and complexity.
Madoff take over social security,
Well, it *is* a Ponzi scheme to begin with:
Where do social security surpluses go? To buy treasury bonds
Who gets the money from the sale of treasury bonds? The federal government
What does the federal government do with that money? Spend it
When the social security administration cashes in those bonds, who has to pay them? The federal government
Where is the federa
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Well, it *is* a Ponzi scheme to begin with:
Nice to see you don't know how a Ponzi Scheme works.
Their are 5 steps to it and if you skip one it's not a Ponzi Scheme, but the critical part is Initial Investors Are Paid Off. This is where it falls apart. Not every Initial Investor actually gets Paid off. Not everyone has eligible survivors and not everyone lives long enough to collect. That's the critical part to the entire thing.
The system only fails when you have too few workers to support the retired population. So because of Declining Birth Rat
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Social Security Surplus should never have been put into the General Fund
Well, sort of. it really should never have been collected in the first place. Instead, it should've just charged what was needed, and published the expected rates going forward 60 years out based on actuarial tables and the expected benefits.
The problem is that the surplus, having been collected, needs to go somewhere. You can't just stick it under a mattress - inflation would eat at its value, and it would also have a chilling effect on the economy. But you can't invest it, either, because that involve
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The problem is that the surplus, having been collected, needs to go somewhere. You can't just stick it under a mattress - inflation would eat at its value, and it would also have a chilling effect on the economy. But you can't invest it, either, because that involves risk, and no one wants to be held accountable for a hundred million person's losses.
You absolutely could invest it. There are lots of *very* low risk, just-over-inflation investment instruments the government could take advantage of. Commercial paper, in particular, comes to mind. Municipal bonds are usually pretty stable, as well.
I think the underlying motivation of creating the surplus was just to create a back-door tax increase.
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Their are 5 steps to it and if you skip one it's not a Ponzi Scheme, but the critical part is Initial Investors Are Paid Off. This is where it falls apart. Not every Initial Investor actually gets Paid off. Not everyone has eligible survivors and not everyone lives long enough to collect. That's the critical part to the entire thing.
I can't believe you seriously think that step didn't happen just because a small number didn't make it to the payoff.
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You're half right. The correct solution for cybersecurity is pretty much the same as everything else: let businesses manage their own security, but provide harsh penalties for companies that fail to protect the privacy of their customers' information. For example, if a company's failed security causes your SSN to become available to somebody else, they have to pay someone to provide credit protec
Re:Don't forget Healthcare, Infrastructure, et al. (Score:3, Interesting)
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It had ATTEMPTS to get horrible anti-gun measures slipped in, along with a metric fuckton of other absurd amendments. I don't believe any of them were actually passed and added on to the bill though. Big difference.
I'm so sick (Score:2)
I'm so very very very very sick of our govt doing their damnedest to turn us into a police state.
This law like so many others is just a pathetic attempt to force ridiculous and unnecessary controls on us while giving the govt the ability to do anything they wish.
I truly wish someone knew how to wake up the majority people who live in this country, because this sort of nonsense needs to come to an abrupt halt.
Not unusual to to blocked by anyone (Score:1)
The measure was blocked amid opposition from an unusual coalition of civil libertarians â" who feared it could allow too much government snooping â" and conservatives who said it would create a new bureaucracy.
This is not unusual. This is the new normal.
Conservatives are currently the ONLY civil libertarians left in government, apart from a handful of Democrats that still respect civil liberties and are willing to break away from the mass of Democrats voting in lock-step.
Even if some are doing it
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If you think conservatives are civil libertarians then I have no idea what to say to you.
Today's conservatives believe for absolute freedom of corporations that that's it. They have absolutely no care for any other freedoms save MAYBE the 2nd amendment. They don't care about any individuals rights... just whatever gets their corporate buddies a bit more money.
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They care about more than just corporations. They also care about things like banning free speech to "fight terrorism" and banning abortions to "protect a right to life" while encouraging an increasing number of deaths at the hands of our police and military...
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If you think conservatives are civil libertarians then I have no idea what to say to you.
Today's conservatives believe for absolute freedom of corporations that that's it. They have absolutely no care for any other freedoms save MAYBE the 2nd amendment. They don't care about any individuals rights... just whatever gets their corporate buddies a bit more money.
No; those are called Neo-Cons , and in no way does their liberal bullshit reflect upon those of us who truly fit the classic definition of a political conservative.
Fuckers hi-jacked our label...
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Are they not true Scotsmen as well?
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Today's conservatives believe for absolute freedom of corporations that that's it.
You're only slightly correct. There are some conservatives who act that way - and they tend to get the most funding and get elected. This is one of the reasons the tea-parties formed. The rank-and-file was sick and tired of sending politicians to Washington based on their promises to cut spending, only to have those politicians betray them.
So what happened, the media made every effort to discredit the tea-partiers, calling them names and making unreasonable accusations of racism. Was this because the
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This is what is weird about American politics (disclaimer, I'm not American). You've managed to totally warp language.
Conservative basically means someone who wants to go back to the old days. The old days varies but is usually some imaginary time when things were perfect for their kind of people.
Progressive is the opposite, they want to go forward to some imaginary time where things are perfect for their type.
Liberal means freedom so by definition liberals want freedom, so are the opposite of authoritarian
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Today's conservatives believe for absolute freedom of corporations that that's it.
Even if that were true, that's better than any other large bloc in Washington. For example, Obamacare didn't come about because someone cared about anyone's freedom.
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the same masses who wonder why freshly deregulated companies will happily serve their cats melamine
Only if they're ignorant of the consequences [reuters.com]:
A huge recall of contaminated pet food is likely to cost Canada's Menu Foods Income Fund MEW_u.TO at least C$45 million ($42 million), even without taking a slump in sales into account, the company said on Wednesday.
This for one business and is in addition to customer law suits and loss of sales.
who move their jobs overseas
We ignore here that all those wonderfully expensive social programs and burdensome labor regulations make us very expensive to hire, especially when the competition is a small fraction of our cost. But somehow this little thing is the fault of tea partiers rather than the people who created the situation with Free Lunch thinking.
the industries who are trying to survive in the US end up getting destroyed by foreign competitors (the US solar industry for example.)
Last I heard, the latest attempts to "save" the US sola
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Conservatives? You need to get specific, as currently the Republican party lays claim to that term and they are ANYTHING but "civil libertarians."
Hilarious. The diversity of opinions in the Democratic party is one of the reasons they've had a hard time pushing past Republican stonewalling. If you want lock-step voting, look at the Republican party.
Y
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Conservatives? You need to get specific, as currently the Republican party lays claim to that term and they are ANYTHING but "civil libertarians."
Tea-party conservatives, specifically. There would be a lot more people saying they support the tea-parties if the media hadn't worked so hard to portray the tea-parties as things they are not (like racist).
Hilarious. The diversity of opinions in the Democratic party is one of the reasons they've had a hard time pushing past Republican stonewalling. If you want lock-step voting, look at the Republican party.
You've been watching too much liberal news, where Republican teamwork is always called "marching in lockstep" and Democratic teamwork is called "unity". It of course confuses you when you see Democratic teamwork called "marching in lockstep".
You will not see this from anyone currently in DC.
Ron Paul was a Republican. Rand Paul, I'm not sure if he is
Misleading Vote (Score:3)
The bill needed 60 votes in the 100-member Senate to advance under rules in the chamber, but got only 52.
That is one of those technically true but exceptionally misleading statements.
Senate bills normally only require a majority vote to pass. But what started in the 80s and has increased markedly since the last presidential election is the abuse of the filibuster. Nowadays a bill can pass in the senate with only a majority vote if the minority party - the GOP - supports it. But if the GOP leadership is opposed to it, they filibuster it such that 60 votes are required, which is generally impossible because of the intense partisanship. So despite the senate being slightly majority democrat, they only tend to pass things that are favored by the GOP.
What's worse is that it doesn't take an actual filibuster, only the threat of one. And even when an actual filibuster is invoked, it doesn't require that the senators stand on the floor and engage in ongoing debate or speechifying like the way us non-politicians would expect.
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Thank you, came here to say the same thing. There's no rule that says it takes 60 votes to pass the senate, that's a GOP invention.
It was the Democrats' invention.
According to Wikipedia, "Finally, in 1975 the Democratic-controlled Senate[5] revised its cloture rule so that three-fifths of the senators sworn (usually 60 senators) could limit debate, except on votes to change Senate rules, which require two-thirds to invoke cloture." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filibuster_in_the_United_States_Senate [wikipedia.org]
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There's no rule that says it takes 60 votes to pass the senate, that's a GOP invention.
It was the Democrats' invention. According to Wikipedia, "Finally, in 1975 the Democratic-controlled Senate[5] revised its cloture rule so that three-fifths of the senators sworn (usually 60 senators) could limit debate
What a stupid... you're claiming that when the Senate in 1975 reduced the requirement for cloture from a 2/3 majority to a 3/5 majority that is what made the Senate today so incapable of accomplishing anything? Because if only more people were required for cloture then the GOP wouldn't have hatched on this idea to filibuster everything?
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But the current state is not the all the fault of the Republicans. Ye
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But what started in the 80s
The filibuster is far older than that and it used to be even harder to overturn than it is now. As to the mean old Republicans getting only what they want passed, same goes for the Democrats or any other voting bloc of large enough size. The Democrats can pull the very same trick, say for example, in 2013 when President Romney wants his laws passed.
The point of the filibuster is to encourage deliberation and compromise, not expedite passage of law. Given what crap gets stymied these days, I really don't
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An ideal solution wouldn't be to simply eliminate the filibuster but to r
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This sort of situation is exactly why filibustering is such a useful tool. And if Romney wins with
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The filibuster is far older than that and it used to be even harder to overturn than it is now.
I typoed out the URL to one of the hundreds of charts [grist.org] illustrating when abuse of the filibuster started.
Given what crap gets stymied these days, I really don't see the point of getting rid of filibuster. It works as advertised.
If only it were, for some reason the democrats don't seem to be using the same way as the GOP does. Maybe because if they did, basically nothing would ever pass.
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I typoed out the URL to one of the hundreds of charts illustrating when abuse of the filibuster started.
Huh, doesn't look like abuse to me. Looks like good strategy to prevent remarkably bad law.
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Huh, doesn't look like abuse to me. Looks like good strategy to prevent remarkably bad law.
By that logic, prior to the 80s, hardly any bad laws were ever considered.
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By that logic, prior to the 80s, hardly any bad laws were ever considered.
Well, that probably is true to a degree. The quality and constitutionality of law I think has gone down over the decades. It's too easy to bulk up bills in the age of the word processor. These become harder to vet as they grow longer. And a lot of constitutional challenges are rearing their ugly little heads right now.
I think the US is at a decision point, whether to continue with a constitutional government and play by set rules or to follow some charismatic leader off a cliff. Fortunately, Obama turns