CISPA: House Vote Sets up Senate Cybersecurity Showdown (Security for the 99%)

[HerbieHeadley]

"WASHINGTON (AP) — The House’s solid bipartisan vote for a cybersecurity bill sends a message to the Senate: Now it’s your turn to act.​

Congressional leaders are determined to get a cybersecurity bill completed this election year but that may be difficult. The Obama administration and several leading Senate Democrats and Republicans want a bill that would give the Homeland Security Department the primary role in overseeing domestic cybersecurity and the authority to set security standards.

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The legislation would allow the government to relay cyber threat information to a company to prevent attacks from Russia or China. In the private sector, corporations could alert the government and provide data that could stop an attack intended to disrupt the country’s water supply or take down the banking system."​

Read more: CISPA: House Vote Sets up Senate Cybersecurity Showdown | Techland | TIME.com

"In the coming weeks, the Senate will try to proceed on its bill by Sens. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., and Susan Collins, R-Maine, who have said the House bill is inadequate in protecting against cyberattacks."

"Security for the 99%??​

The House of Representatives kicked off their “cybersecurity week” yesterday with a hearing titled "America Is Under Cyber Attack: Why Urgent Action is Needed."

Needless to say, the rhetoric of fear was in full force. A lot of topics were raised by members of Congress and panelists, but perhaps the most troublesome theme came from panelist and Former Executive Assistant Director of the FBI Shawn Henry, who repeatedly urged that good cybersecurity means going on the offensive:

“the problem with existing [...] tactics is that they are too focused on adversary tools (malware and exploits) and not on who the adversary is and how they operate. Ultimately, until we focus on the enemy and take the fight to them […], we will fail.”

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/04/security-99​

​

“In an effort to foster information sharing, this bill would erode the privacy protections of every single American using the Internet. It would create a `Wild West’ of information sharing,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson of
Mississippi, the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee.

Said Rep. Joe Barton, R-Texas: “Until we protect the privacy rights of our citizens, the solution is worse than the problem.”


Read more: http://techland.time.com/2012/04/27/cispa-house-vote-sets-up-senate-cybersecurity-showdown/?iid=tl-article-latest#ixzz1tFPPXMn3

In an attempt to protect against cyber threats by foreign and domestic enemy hackers it seems our government has decided that all our private information on the internet is up for grabs to government surveillance without warrant and basically deputizing the private sectors to spy on Americans and is compelling all internet entities to collect store and manage in order to forward any request of information to our government protectors.

“Under CISPA, private companies may spy on user communications, whether stored or in transit, and freely pass personal information to the government as long as they claim a vague "cyber security" exception.”

　
I am for protective security measures but this just seems like another excuse for big brother to monitor anyone’s internet activity . The House has purposively passed their own version preempting other versions being worked in the Senate. Those who have been weary of the Patriot Act should be able to see this as another version of our government disregarding our fourth amendment rights as free citizens. Basically, this bill still has a lot of problems, and a sunset of 5 years doesn’t make me feel sooth my concerns.

My comments here may pose a “cyber security” risk and then this site may forward my details to the NSA or Nappy. So also may my own internet service provider and thus all and any information about me will be investigated and monitored. In order for me to defend myself against my privacy rights being violated under a false accusation somehow I need to prove there was willful and knowingly malicious conduct against me by these information gatherers who are under an exemption of liability.

How would I even know it is happening? How many ways does this bill undermine not only personal privacy but all of our personal identities without a court order?
　
Copious Content and Communications

Under CISPA, private companies may spy on user communications, whether stored or in transit, and freely pass personal information to the government as long as they claim a vague "cybersecurity" exception. In a press call, Rep. Rogers stated that the bill "does not provide any authority for the government to monitor private networks or read private email," yet the bill allows private companies to use vaguely defined “cybersecurity systems” to "identify and obtain" information on any relevant cyber threat and then send the communications (without de-identifying the data) to the government. As long as companies act in "good faith" and the collection is for a "cybersecurity purpose"—a purpose as vague as protecting or securing any network from degradation or disruption—there are no limits on what type of information can be intercepted and shared. In short, surveillance would be outsourced to private companies that are not governed by the Fourth Amendment.

The bill also creates expansive legal immunity that makes companies and the government largely unaccountable to users. The bill provides “good faith” immunity for using “cybersecurity systems” to obtain information, for not acting on information that a company learns, and for making any decisions based on the information they learn. If a company learns about a security flaw, fails to fix it, and users' information is misused or stolen, companies cannot be held liable as long as the company acted “in good faith” according to CISPA. Companies “acting in good faith” are also excused from all liability for engaging in potential countermeasures, even if they hurt innocent parties.

What constitutes “good faith” is unclear on the face of CISPA, given its overall vagueness—which is likely to make difficult any attempt at litigating against companies. CISPA grants surveillance power to private entities “[n]otwithstanding any other provision of law,” which may nullify existing rights to sue under laws such as the Wiretap Act, the Stored Communications Act, and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Combined with the bill’s broad “good faith” immunity, this scheme attacks our long-held legal traditions that create checks and balances through independent judicial oversight. If CISPA passes, companies lose any legally based incentive to protect user privacy, such as federal or state privacy laws that stop companies from sharing sensitive personal information like health records and personal financial information.

　

The Fourth Amendment (Amendment IV) to the United States Constitution is the part of the Bill of Rights which guards against unreasonable searches and seizures, along with requiring any warrant to be judicially sanctioned and supported by probable cause. It was adopted as a response to the abuse of the writ of assistance, which is a type of general search warrant, in the American Revolution. Search and arrest should be limited in scope according to specific information supplied to the issuing court, usually by a law enforcement officer, who has sworn by it.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/04/open-letter-academics-and-engineers-us-congress

 

[MachZer0]

Hasn't Mr Obama promised to veto the bill?

 

[Touma]

To play on the opposite side for a min....

" private companies may spy on user communications"


What exactly is wrong with a private company spying on a user which uses it's services?

 

[SmellsLikeCurlyFries]

Passed House 248-168.

GOP - 206 For, 28 Against

Democrats - 42 For, 140 Against

Hm...interesting...

 

[Touma]

Clearly the Democrats are tyrants that want to increase the gov't to be your big brother.

 

[SmellsLikeCurlyFries]

Clearly the Democrats are tyrants that want to increase the gov't to be your big brother.

Must be...

 

[HerbieHeadley]

Hasn't Mr Obama promised to veto the bill?

Is there anyone left actually gullible enough to believe such a thing after Obama has shown himself to be a liar time and time again? Did you forget the wink-wink smiley Mach?

Here is a headline:

Obama said today exact opposite of what Obama claimed before

"It's the right thing to do." said Obama.


Obama did not veto the National Defense Authorization Act that would allow the military to round up and indefinitely detain American citizens without charge or trial. Matter of fact, it was the Obama administration that requested that the language preventing it being applied to U.S. citizens be removed, said Senator Carl Levin on the Senate floor.

 

[HerbieHeadley]

Under construction by contractors with top-secret clearances, the blandly named Utah Data Center is being built for the National Security Agency. A project of immense secrecy, it is the final piece in a complex puzzle assembled over the past decade. Its purpose: to intercept, decipher, analyze, and store vast swaths of the world’s communications as they zap down from satellites and zip through the underground and undersea cables of international, foreign, and domestic networks. The heavily fortified $2 billion center should be up and running in September 2013.

Flowing through its servers and routers and stored in near-bottomless databases will be all forms of communication, including the complete contents of private emails, cell phone calls, and Google searches, as well as all sorts of personal data trails—parking receipts, travel itineraries, bookstore purchases, and other digital “pocket litter.” It is, in some measure, the realization of the “total information awareness” program created during the first term of the Bush administration—an effort that was killed by Congress in 2003 after it caused an outcry over its potential for invading Americans’ privacy.

"But “this is more than just a data center,” says one senior intelligence official who until recently was involved with the program. The mammoth Bluffdale center will have another important and far more secret role that until now has gone unrevealed. It is also critical, he says, for breaking codes. And code-breaking is crucial, because much of the data that the center will handle—financial information, stock transactions, business deals, foreign military and diplomatic secrets, legal documents, confidential personal communications—will be heavily encrypted. According to another top official also involved with the program, the NSA made an enormous breakthrough several years ago in its ability to cryptanalyze, or break, unfathomably complex encryption systems employed by not only governments around the world but also many average computer users in the US. The upshot, according to this official: “Everybody’s a target; everybody with communication is a target.”

NSA has turned its surveillance apparatus on the US and its citizens. It has established listening posts throughout the nation to collect and sift through billions of email messages and phone calls, whether they originate within the country or overseas. It has created a supercomputer of almost unimaginable speed to look for patterns and unscramble codes. Finally, the agency has begun building a place to store all the trillions of words and thoughts and whispers captured in its electronic net. And, of course, it’s all being done in secret. To those on the inside, the old adage that NSA stands for Never Say Anything applies more than ever.

With its new Utah Data Center, the NSA will at last have the technical capability to store, and rummage through, all those stolen secrets. The question, of course, is how the agency defines who is, and who is not, “a potential adversary.”

"For the first time, a former NSA official has gone on the record to describe the program, codenamed Stellar Wind, in detail. William Binney was a senior NSA crypto-mathematician largely responsible for automating the agency’s worldwide eavesdropping network.

According to Binney, one of the deepest secrets of the Stellar Wind program—again, never confirmed until now—was that the NSA gained warrantless access to AT&T’s vast trove of domestic and international billing records, detailed information about who called whom in the US and around the world. As of 2007, AT&T had more than 2.8 trillion records housed in a database at its Florham Park, New Jersey, complex.
Verizon was also part of the program, Binney says, and that greatly expanded the volume of calls subject to the agency’s domestic eavesdropping. “That multiplies the call rate by at least a factor of five,” he says. “So you’re over a billion and a half calls a day.” (Spokespeople for Verizon and AT&T said their companies would not comment on matters of national security.)

After he left the NSA, Binney suggested a system for monitoring people’s communications according to how closely they are connected to an initial target. The further away from the target—say you’re just an acquaintance of a friend of the target—the less the surveillance. But the agency rejected the idea, and, given the massive new storage facility in Utah, Binney suspects that it now simply collects everything. “The whole idea was, how do you manage 20 terabytes of intercept a minute?” he says. “The way we proposed was to distinguish between things you want and things you don’t want.” Instead, he adds, “they’re storing everything they gather.” And the agency is gathering as much as it can.

Once the communications are intercepted and stored, the data-mining begins. “You can watch everybody all the time with data- mining,” Binney says. Everything a person does becomes charted on a graph, “financial transactions or travel or anything,” he says. Thus, as data like bookstore receipts, bank statements, and commuter toll records flow in, the NSA is able to paint a more and more detailed picture of someone’s life."

The NSA also has the ability to eavesdrop on phone calls directly and in real time. According to Adrienne J. Kinne, who worked both before and after 9/11 as a voice interceptor at the NSA facility in Georgia, in the wake of the World Trade Center attacks “basically all rules were thrown out the window, and they would use any excuse to justify a waiver to spy on Americans.” Even journalists calling home from overseas were included. “A lot of time you could tell they were calling their families,” she says, “incredibly intimate, personal conversations.” Kinne found the act of eavesdropping on innocent fellow citizens personally distressing. “It’s almost like going through and finding somebody’s diary,” she says.

Binney left the NSA in late 2001, shortly after the agency launched its warrantless-wiretapping program. “They violated the Constitution setting it up,” he says bluntly. “But they didn’t care. They were going to do it anyway, and they were going to crucify anyone who stood in the way. When they started violating the Constitution, I couldn’t stay.” Binney says Stellar Wind was far larger than has been publicly disclosed and included not just eavesdropping on domestic phone calls but the inspection of domestic email.

The NSA Is Building the Country's Biggest Spy Center (Watch What You Say) | Threat Level | Wired.com


.Wired reports Binney saying “We are, like, that far from a turnkey totalitarian state” as he held up his thumb and forefinger close together.

 

[SmellsLikeCurlyFries]

Obama did not veto the National Defense Authorization Act that would allow the military to round up and indefinitely detain American citizens without charge or trial. Matter of fact, it was the Obama administration that requested that the language preventing it being applied to U.S. citizens be removed, said Senator Carl Levin on the Senate floor.

Meanwhile, the vast majority of Republicans voted against the amendment that would strike that part from the law, while the Democrats voted for it.

 

[HerbieHeadley]

(NaturalNews) Two former high-ranking officials at the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA), a federal bureaucracy that collects data and intelligence on foreign communications for national security purposes, have come forward with allegations that the NSA actively monitors Americans as well. According to testimonies from both Thomas Drake, a former NSA senior official, and Kirk Wiebe, a former NSA senior analyst, the agency actively monitors and collects intelligence on every single American as part of a massive spying operation.

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/036689_NSA_whistleblowers_spying.html#ixzz22gUt75nl

It's official...

EVERY SINGLE AMERICAN IS UNDER A COLLECTION OF DATA SURVEILLANCE AS PART OF A MASSIVE SPYING OPERATION.

"My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government." - Thomas Jefferson

"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them." - Thomas Jefferson

 

[HerbieHeadley]

Senate Republicans recently blocked cybersecurity legislation, but the issue might not be dead after all.

After defeat of Senate cybersecurity bill, Obama weighs executive-order option - The Hill's Hillicon Valley

I started this thread thinking there was a need to prevent our government or military industrial complex if you will, from pushing private entities to collect private data about individuals in the public domain. However, Google, Facebook, etc. have no problems collecting private information today and all these bills just seem to be enacting legislation to make it legal for what the NSA is doing already.

 

[Illuminaughty]

The government is demanding that private internet companies help them out in the spying arena?