The problem is, the bill they’re laser-focused on is misguided, wouldn’t protect us — and is a huge gift to companies wanting legal cover if and when they choose to violate Americans’ privacy rights.
In March, the Senate Intelligence Committee voted 14–1 in favor of the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015 (CISA). The bill, like its infamous predecessor CISPA, would allow companies to share vast amounts of users’ private and personally identifiable data with the government. That information would go straight to the Department of Homeland Security and then on to the NSA.
If CISA passes, companies would be permitted to monitor and then report to the government on vaguely defined “cyber-threat indicators” — a term so broad that it covers actual threats hackers pose to computer systems but also sweeps in information on crimes like carjacking and burglaries. Those are serious offenses to be sure, but they have nothing to do with cybersecurity.
While current law allows companies to monitor their own systems for cyber threats, CISA would take this to the next level. The bill would allow companies that hold huge swaths of our personal data — like health insurers and credit-card companies — to monitor and report online activity “notwithstanding any other provision of law.”
This means that CISA would undermine the strong protections embedded in laws like the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 and the Privacy Act of 1964 — laws designed to keep the government from spying on our communications.
While posing a serious threat to our privacy online, CISA wouldn’t even guard well against cyber attacks. The bill offers a bad trade-off, to put it mildly.
The flashpoints for activism are the many failures of the existing media system. Whether it’s the silencing of dissenting views, the attacks on online privacy, the throttling of Internet access or the monopolization of choice, the problems are often rooted in bad public policy.
The Web We Want invites cartoonists, creatives and artists to join The Day We Fight Back on February 11, 2014 by creating an original cartoon about online surveillance and the right to privacy. The cartoons should help increase awareness about the NSA and demand accountability for mass digital surveillance in a way that makes people want to click and share.
Congress is rushing toward a vote on CISA, the worst spying bill yet. CISA would grant sweeping legal immunity to giant companies like Facebook and Google, allowing them to do almost anything they want with your data. In exchange, they’ll share even more of your personal information with the government, all in the name of “cybersecurity.” CISA won’t stop hackers — Congress is stuck in 1984 and doesn’t understand modern technology. So this week we’re sending them thousands of faxes — technology that is hopefully old enough for them to understand.
http://www.freepress.net/blog/2015/12/18/good-bad-and-ugly-government-budget-bill
Congress just passed an enormous omnibus-spending bill to keep the government running — but what’s in this bill besides funding for various agencies?
Glenn Greenwald was one of the first reporters to see — and write about — the Edward Snowden files, with their revelations about the United States’ extensive surveillance of private citizens. In this searing talk, Greenwald makes the case for why you need to care about privacy, even if you’re “not doing anything you need to hide.”
The NSA has broken privacy rules or overstepped its legal authority thousands of times every year since 2008, according to an internal audit provided by Edward Snowden
Here is the entire NSA audit detailing the agency’s thousands of privacy violations.
Because more details are always good.
"Oh yeah, that surveillance stuff we do, don’t worry we got that shit under control and shit, you know FISA courts and all no worries we ain’t looking at your emails and tapping your phones, metadata terrorists!" — NSA spokesman
President Obama has picked Nicole Wong, currently Twitter’s legal director, to be the White House’s first chief privacy officer…
Wong was previously a vice president and deputy general counsel at Google in its Mountain View headquarters, where she managed a team of lawyers who worked with the company’s engineers to review products before launches. That included privacy, copyright, and removal requests, which earned her a nickname — as recounted in a 2008 New York Times Magazine article — of “The Decider.”
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