Angry at CISPA

[silicon_toad2000]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/04/22/anonymous_cispa_shutdown/

More than 827,000 people have signed an online petition against the new laws, which are seen as allowing the government to pry into netizens' online lives using the flimsiest of justifications. The Act also allows the government to share "cyber threat intelligence" with private-sector entities.

The petition blurb says:

    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.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation have launched an online service allowing angry CISPA opponents to write to their senator.

Its FAQ on CISPA says:

    The bill purports to allow companies and the federal government to share information to prevent or defend against network and other Internet attacks. However, the bill grants broad new powers, allowing companies to identify and obtain “threat information” by looking at your private information.

    It is written so broadly that it allows companies to hand over large swathes of personal information to the government with no judicial oversight—effectively creating a “cybersecurity” loophole in all existing privacy laws.

The CISPA law was passed in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives last week, with 288 votes in favour and 127 votes against, but now has to pass through the Democrat-held Senate to make it into law.

An amendment to the law which would ban employers asking their minions to hand over Facebook or Twitter passwords has already been blocked.

The EFF page spoken of here to help people to write to their local members is here https://action.eff.org/o/9042/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=9048. So wirte to your local member and spread the word.
In a perfect world, if you don't do anything wrong it won't affect you. We don't live in a perfect world and all that data is being kept about what we do in our own homes, waiting for a hacker, a disgruntled employee or sloppy IT security process to allow the information out into the open.

[GhostShip]

With such anti-democratic laws being passed it falls as usual to the common man to defend his rights, to prevent your private information ending up as exploit, fraud or blackmail fodder for some despotic federal employee or private entity that answers to no-one US Netizens should be prepared to use pro privacy tools such as heavy encryption, https, TOR routing tools and anything that will mount a serious obstacle to those seeking to gain unfettered power over their fellow citizens, the plain fact is if the "sponsored" sheep at the US congress are ready to pass such laws they need to be firstly shown the door come the next election and be called on to open up their private affairs to further scrutiny or be seen for what they are. 

Such laws that attack the basic tenets of society have no place in a democracy, all are entitled to privacy of their affairs unless a judge rules otherwise and all judges take that responsibility very seriously, cutting those safeguards away from democratic oversight is morally wrong.

[silicon_toad2000]

Does the government in the US still need a warrant to tap phone calls?

[silicon_toad2000]

http://torrentfreak.com/cispa-anyone-exposing-pirates-a-the-u-s-government-130422/

In short, CISPA would allow companies to spy on Internet users and collect and share this data with third-party companies or Government agencies. As long as the company states that these privacy violations are needed to protect against “cybersecurity” threats, they are immune from civil and criminal liabilities.

Critics of the bill point out that it would allow companies to spy on Internet users, and with flexible definitions of cybersecurity it could potentially be used to monitor the download habits of Internet subscribers.