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Ear to the Ground

Your CISPA Primer

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Posted on Apr 26, 2012
aubergene (CC BY 2.0)

The U.S. House of Representatives will vote Friday on the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act. What is it, and what does it mean for freedom and security on the Web? RT has assembled a quick guide to answer those questions. —ARK

RT:

The act says it is meant to create procedures allowing “elements of the intelligence community to share cyber threat intelligence with private-sector entities and to encourage the sharing of such intelligence.”  It also states that a cyber-security provider or a self-protected entity may share “cyber threat information”  “with any other entity designated by such protected entity, including… the Federal Government.”

But what does that mean?

Unnecessarily broad definitions are the factor which makes CISPA so controversial with web users.

Experts argue that the bill would give the government the ability to circumvent internet privacy laws and obtain information on user activities from private companies – be it providers, hosting companies or social networks – essentially any company involved in the Internet.

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By Big B, April 26, 2012 at 5:23 pm Link to this comment

Hate to break it to everyone out there in tv land, but the NSA has been saving nearly all the data on the internet and most phone calls for nearly 10 years now. They are currently building a large facility in Utah so they can save and collate all info from the public and private airwaves.

Someone named Winston is already reading your e-mails. The only thing we can do now is burn it all down, and start again.

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By Mekhong Kurt, April 26, 2012 at 3:21 pm Link to this comment

I read about this somewhere a few days ago and immediately emailed my right-wing Republican congressman, but I expect him to vote for it, and to vote with great gusto.

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By Alan MacDonald, April 26, 2012 at 3:12 pm Link to this comment

Some of the language of CISPA sounds like it might have been written by John Yoo.

The determination of when CISPA info collection might cross over the boundary of illegality sounds a lot like when enhanced interrogation crosses the line——“pain equivalent to failure of an organ or death”—- that kind of stuff.

Heck, NDAA hasn’t caused us organ failure gang, so what’s the big deal about CISPA?

And just think of the ‘synergies’ as the corporate CEOs like to say in M&A deals.

Yea, the detention centers can do unlimited strip searches, and the real benefit, is that now they could shove fiber-optic cable bundles up our arses to check every physical and data cavity.

Now, THAT’s synergy folks—- and government efficiency.

Maybe, just maybe, it’s time for us to start looking up the arse of this friggin Global Empire, wouldn’t you say?

Best luck and love to the “Occupy Empire"educational & revolutionary movement.

Liberty, democracy, equality, & justice
Over
Violent/Vichy
Empire,

Alan MacDonald

Sanford, Maine

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By Marian Griffith, April 26, 2012 at 12:44 pm Link to this comment
(Unregistered commenter)

This simply is another example of government ‘by the corporations, for the corporations’

Government already habitually ignores laws and regulations when it comes to spying or privacy, and now extends that impunity and immunity to all corporations.

It also teaches government that if they want to get a law like SOPA or PIPA to pass they simply have to make it profitable for the corporations. They will cheer it all the way through the legislative process and shower the political supporters with campaign donations.

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By gerard, April 26, 2012 at 12:39 pm Link to this comment

1.—“The act says it is meant to create procedures allowing “elements of the intelligence community to share cyber threat intelligence with private-sector entities and to encourage the sharing of such intelligence.” 
2.—It also states that a cyber-security provider or a self-protected entity may share “cyber threat information”  “with any other entity designated by such protected entity, including… the Federal Government.”
  Remarks:  Number 1 sounds like a belated attempt to legitimize private contractors like Stratfor to legalize what they may have already been doing more or less surreptitiously and/or illegally. In other words, creating a public/private business monopoly beyond citizen access.
  Number 2 sounds like a reinforcement (perhaps extension) of Number 1, to be sure the Feds are in like Flynn on all snooping, euphemistically called
“national security,” but which, as a matter of sad fact, is creating a confused, suspicious, disunited, insecure, craven and half-anaesthetized society pawing through the rubbish heaps of disinformation and lost possibilities. Sorry to have to say it.
  I hope I’m wrong, but things in the “security” business seem to be making life more and more difficult for us poor jerks who might have one or two new ideas in our heads that should be allowed to see the light of day somewhere. Seems that hungry ghosts grow ever more scared of ordinary living people, mostly because the ghosts know they are nibbling away at people’s Constitutional rights under cover of darkness.
  CISPA:  Otherwise known as Continuous Interferemce by Surveillance of Private Affairs.

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