Boycott Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA)

[Easy Skanking]

From an email I got:

Quote:Right now, the US Congress is sneaking in a new law that gives them big brother spy powers over the entire web -- and they're hoping the world won't notice. We helped stop their Net attack last time, let's do it again.

Over 100 Members of Congress are backing a bill (CISPA) that would give private companies and the US government the right to spy on any of us at any time for as long as they want without a warrant. This is the third time the US Congress has tried to attack our Internet freedom. But we helped beat SOPA, and PIPA -- and now we can beat this new Big Brother law.

Our global outcry has played a leading role in protecting the Internet from governments eager to monitor and control what we do online. Let's stand together once again -- and beat this law for good. Sign the petition then forward to everyone who uses the Internet:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/stop_cispa/?vl

Under the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), if a cyber threat is even suspected, companies we use to access the Internet will have the right to collect information on our activities, share that with the government, refuse to notify us that we are being watched and then use a blanket immunity clause to protect themselves from being sued for violation of privacy or any other illegal action. It's a crazy destruction of the privacy we all rely on in our everyday emails, Skype chats, web searches and more.

But we know that the US Congress is afraid of the world's response. This is the third time they have tried to rebrand their attempt to attack our Internet freedom and push it through under the radar, each time changing the law's name and hoping citizens would be asleep at the wheel. Already, Internet rights groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation have condemned the bill for its interference with basic privacy rights -- now it's time for us to speak out.

Sign the petition to Congress opposing CISPA. When we reach 250,000 signers our call will be delivered to each of the 100 US Representatives backing the bill:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/stop_cispa/?vl

Internet freedom faces threats everyday from governments around the world -- but the US is best placed to attack the rights of Internet users because so much of the Net's infrastructure is located there. Our movement has, time and time again, proven that global public opinion can help beat back US threats to our Net. Let's do it again.

With hope,

Emma, Rewan, Ricken, Antonia, Lisa, Morgan, Mia, Pascal and the entire Avaaz team


More information

Move over SOPA & PIPA: Here comes CISPA — Internet censorship (Digital Journal)
http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/322396

CISPA: Congressional plan to censor Internet concerns critics (Examiner)
http://www.examiner.com/progressive-in-p...ns-critics

Good freedom, bad freedom: Irony of cybersecurity (RT)
http://rt.com/usa/news/usa-internet-cybe...cispa-299/

Internet SOPA/PIPA Revolt: Don’t Declare Victory Yet (Wired)
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/01...lt-follow/

H.R. 3523: Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/112/hr3523

[Shinobi]

Please sign this petition. Just like the roundly defeated SOPA and PIPA
this new bill seeks to strip us of Internet Privacy.

http://www.avaaz.org/en/stop_cispa/?vl

Over 100 Members of Congress are backing a bill (CISPA) that would give private companies
and the US government the right to spy on any of us at any time for as long as they want without a warrant.
This is the third time the US Congress has tried to attack our Internet freedom. But we helped beat SOPA, and PIPA
-- and now we can beat this new Big Brother law.

Source: All Over The Web.

{A huge amount of people supporting this get on the case
lots of sigs already. Peace}

[Easy Skanking]

Previously posted here: Boycott Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA)
[Merged: ~FastTadpole]

[CharliePrime]

The Congressman where I live is a leading warmonger who never misses an opportunity to lick Israel's boots.

I refuse to get on my knees and beg him for anything.

The market, both grey and black, will find a way around whatever nonsense laws they enact.

[SiLVa]

I look at it as standing up, not kneeling down. Its awesome...Almost 600,000 signatures. And they keep pouring in. Glad to see so many people standing up.

[Easy Skanking]

(04-10-2012 02:57 PM)CharliePrime Wrote:  The Congressman where I live is a leading warmonger who never misses an opportunity to lick Israel's boots.

I refuse to get on my knees and beg him for anything.

The market, both grey and black, will find a way around whatever nonsense laws they enact.

It's not begging.

It's telling them we understand what they are doing and demanding they stop. If you take the system for what it claims to be, then they work for us. If not then, we have the numbers to tell them they can't do this ANYMORE.
There is change happening and things are happening rapidly all over. Don't let the villains get away with anything!

[CharliePrime]

(04-10-2012 10:30 PM)Easy Skanking Wrote:  If you take the system for what it claims to be, then they work for us. If not then, we have the numbers to tell them they can't do this ANYMORE.

I disagree Shanking. Politicians are highly responsive to voters. The majority of voters want war and free stuff. The majority of voters are willing to tolerate fascistic corporate/government raping of the taxpayer as long as they get to participate.

Change will happen when a significant minority choose to stop participating in the immorality of government.

Here is the market finding a way around government...

http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=39182

Quote:This Internet provider pledges to put your privacy first. Always.

Nicholas Merrill is planning to revolutionize online privacy with a concept as simple as it is ingenious: a telecommunications provider designed from its inception to shield its customers from surveillance.

...The ISP would not merely employ every technological means at its disposal, including encryption and limited logging, to protect its customers. It would also -- and in practice this is likely more important -- challenge government surveillance demands of dubious legality or constitutionality.

[Easy Skanking]

Quote:Friends,

We pushed them to the brink, but the House Republicans rammed through CISPA this afternoon, ahead of schedule. Let's make sure it dies in the Senate.

Please click here to email your Senators:

http://act.demandprogress.org/letter/cis...e=auto-taf

CISPA would give the government and corporations vast new powers to track and share data about Americans' Internet use.

But our hundreds of thousands of emails and tens of thousands of phone calls have had a real impact:

-Amendments were adopted that made CISPA (marginally) better.

-Earlier this month CISPA was supposed to sail through, but we helped foment opposition, and the vote was far closer than anybody could have imagined even a couple of weeks ago.

-Most Democrats held firm in opposition, and more than two dozen libertarian-leaning Republicans defied their leadership and voted no.

-Most importantly, President Obama has threatened to veto CISPA.

The Senate will consider cyber security legislation in the coming weeks. Let's turn up the heat right away: Tell the Senate to reject CISPA and any and all legislation that doesn't respect privacy and civil liberties.

Just click here:

http://act.demandprogress.org/letter/cis...e=auto-taf

Thanks!

[icosaface]

I put my 2 cents worth in.

[drummer]

Sopa and Pipa: they'll be back
The movie and music industries won't drop it. So we need to find legally smart ways of protecting copyright and internet freedom

At the end of a Hollywood blockbuster, when the vanquished villain declares that he should have won and that we haven't seen the last of him, we all know what it means: the sequel is coming.

So, Hollywood's top lobbyist, former Senator Chris Dodd, followed a familiar script last week after sweeping online protests derailed the Stop Online Piracy Act (Sopa) and Protect IP Act (Pipa), a pair of legislative proposals backed by movie and music distributors. Dodd snarled that his opponents had misled the public and vowed to continue pressing for new laws to combat unauthorized copying of intellectual property. Coming soon to a congressional hearing room near you, it's Sopa II: Revenge of the Content Industries.

While the US Senate and House of Representatives deferred immediate action on the bills, few doubt that Congress will debate some form of legislation aimed at overseas web sites engaged in intellectual property (IP) infringement, probably later this year. Even Dodd's enemies acknowledge that these sites pose a problem, though many question industry estimates about its scope.

Those of us who opposed the excesses of Sopa and Pipa need to prepare for the next round. Sponsors have already abandoned the bills' most objectionable feature, which interfered with the domain name addressing system in an attempt to cut off access to "pirate" sites – a measure critics charged would "break the internet". At a minimum, Congress must address three other problems as well.

First and foremost, Sopa II needs to take due process seriously. My students spend their first week of law school learning that subjects of a legal action are entitled to notice of the claims against them and an opportunity to be heard. The law's departures from these principles are rare, brief and strictly regulated. Limitations on speech require even greater care; a near prohibition on "prior restraints" against publication has become a cornerstone of first amendment doctrine.

Sopa and Pipa blithely discarded these fundamental doctrines. They would allow a court to penalize supposedly "pirate" web sites without giving affected parties any advance notice, much less an opportunity to present their side of the story. We have already seen how inadequate procedures in existing law allow sweeping and erroneous enforcement actions in the name of protecting intellectual property.

Under one alternative bill, the Online Protection & Enforcement of Digital Trade Act (or Open Act), the International Trade Commission (ITC) would hold adversarial proceedings before designating a "rogue" site and issuing orders that would cut off its access to US-based advertisement and payment processing. Whether it's the ITC, a court or another institution, somebody needs to consider all arguments carefully rather than rushing to judgment.

Second, the standards for judging infringement must be clear and must be consistent with existing intellectual property law. Just compare the muddy language describing the prohibitions in Sopa with the Open Act's requirement that a site's activities are "primarily" and "willfully" infringing intellectual property. Moreover, Sopa II needs to incorporate existing defenses to infringement accusations, such as copyright fair use and trademark doctrines permitting resale of legitimate branded merchandise.

Finally, these bills cannot shift IP owners' duty to safeguard their own rights onto innocent bystanders like Google, eBay or Facebook. Open online forums enable millions of daily communications from ordinary people. Intermediaries cannot examine every post searching for links to pirates. That's why federal law exempts them from liability for nearly everything their users post independently – even fraud or defamation. IP already gets special treatment, because intermediaries must remove infringing material if rightsholders complain.

Sopa and Pipa went further, requiring intermediaries to scrutinize all user-generated content lest it even link to a "rogue" site. That's like telling the farmboy he doesn't need to find all the needles in the haystack, only the silver ones. The burden to identify problems must remain on the owners who benefit from their IP rights, not on intermediaries uninvolved in the infringement.

With these principles in mind, the sequel to Sopa could have an even happier ending, with the internet rescued and the pirates defeated. But I'm betting on some more plot twists.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/...ll-be-back

[pax681]

over 800,000 sigs now!

[Easy Skanking]

Quote:CISPA is back.
Remember when we defeated the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) last year? Well, it's back with a vengeance. The leading Republican and Democrat on the U.S. House Intelligence subcommittee re-introduced the cybersnooping bill this week.

We beat it once. We can beat it again. Click here to tell your lawmakers to support privacy and oppose CISPA. http://act.demandprogress.org/go/852?t=1...493.hSpjRQ

To refresh your memory, Demand Progress co-founder Aaron Swartz called CISPA 1.0 a Patriot Act for the Internet. But now they've rebooted the effort, and Rolling Stone says that with CISPA 2.0, "Congress is trying to kill Internet privacy again."

The bill gives companies like Verizon and AT&T protection from customers' lawsuits when they give the Feds information about your Internet use.

Amazingly, Congress and big businesses are claiming they need to violate our privacy to protect us from Iranian and Chinese hackers, but they refuse to put any basic privacy protections in writing.

CISPA would undermine our basic rights and jeopardize our privacy online. Click here to tell your lawmakers to oppose to it. http://act.demandprogress.org/go/852?t=2...493.hSpjRQ

CISPA sponsor Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger even said at a hearing this week that he didn't see any reason why businesses needed to hide your personal data from the government.

Already over 200,000 Demand Progress members have contacted Congress to oppose this bill, but we need your help again.

Help us defend Internet privacy from the latest assault by Congress and big business.

Click here to tell your lawmakers to oppose CISPA 2.0

Please urge your friends to take action by forwarding this email or using these links:
[fb] If you're already on Facebook, click here to share with your friends. http://act.demandprogress.org/go/853?t=4...493.hSpjRQ
[fb] If you're already on Twitter, click here to tweet about the campaign: Tweet http://act.demandprogress.org/go/854?t=5...493.hSpjRQ

[April]

Quote:US House of Representatives passes CISPA cybersecurity bill

The US House of Representatives has passed the controversial Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protect Act (CISPA).

Lawmakers in the House voted 288-to-127 Thursday afternoon to accept the bill. Next it will move to the Senate and could then end up on the desk of US President Barack Obama for him to potentially sign the bill into law. Earlier this week, though, senior White House advisers said they would recommend the president veto the bill.

Should CISPA earn the president’s autograph, private businesses will be encouraged to voluntarily share cyberthreat information with the US government. The authors of the bill say this is an effort to better combat the reportedly increasing attempts to harm America’s critical computer networks and pilfer the systems of private companies for intellectual property and other sensitive trade secrets.

One of the bill’s creators, Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Maryland), said during a round of debate on Wednesday that $400 billion worth of American trade secrets are being stolen by US companies every year. Passing CISPA, he said, would be a common sense solution to a threat that’s growing at an alarming rate.

“If your house is being robbed, you call 911 and the police department comes. That’s the same scenario we are looking at here,” he said.

Also testifying Wednesday, Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Florida) said CISPA could be used to combat the 25 million cybercrime victims she claims are targeted every day.

That same day, CISPA co-author Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Michigan) stressed that his bill doesn’t extend any extra surveillance powers to the federal government, despite condemnation from critics that say exactly that. “It does something very simple: it allows the government to share zeroes and ones with the private sector,” he said. Rather, he called it "a critical bipartisan first step for enabling American’s private sector to defend itself" and "improves cybersecurity without compromising our civil liberties."

“We have yet to find a single United States company that opposes this bill,” said Rep. Rogers.

But companies do in fact oppose CISPA, including a number of entities that carry a good deal of clout around both Silicon Valley and inside the beltway. Just last month Facebook rescinded their support of the act, according to Cnet’s Declan McCullagh, because a spokesperson for the social media site says they prefer a legislative "balance" that ensures "the privacy of our users.”

After CISPA was unsuccessfully introduced to Congress last year — only to stall in the Senate — Microsoft endorsed the act only to eventually do an about-face.

“Microsoft believes that any proposed legislation should facilitate the voluntary sharing of cyber threat information in a manner that allows us to honor the privacy and security promises we make to our customers,” the company’s Scott Charney told McCullagh at the time.

But just last week, TechNet President Rey Ramsey sent a letter to Reps. Rogers and Ruppersberger saying his group thinks CISPA "recognizes the need for effective cybersecurity legislation that encourages voluntary, bi-directional, real time sharing of actionable cyberthreat information to protect networks," but that further work may be needed. TechNet’s Executive Council includes Yahoo's Marissa Mayer, Google's Eric Schmidt and Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith.

Web browser makers Mozilla oppose the bill, as does the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the American Civil Liberties Union, and last year’s attempt to pass CISPA after it was unveiled for a first time prompted the White House to issue a veto warning then. In the months since the bill stalled in the Senate, though, the president has on his own part urged Congress to adopt a new cybersecurity bill.

more here... http://rt.com/usa/congress-house-bill-cispa-031/

[CharliePrime]

See if your "representative" voted for or against: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/113-2013/h117

[SiLVa]