Jew World Order

An onrush of condemnation and criticism kept the SOPA and
PIPA acts from passing earlier this year, but US lawmakers have already
authored another authoritarian bill that could give them free reign to
creep the Web in the name of cyber security. ~ Video

As congressmen in
Washington consider how to handle the ongoing issue of cyber attacks,
some legislators have lent their support to a new act that, if passed,
would let the government pry into the personal correspondence of anyone
of their choosing.

H.R. 3523, a piece of legislation dubbed the
Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (or CISPA for short), has
been created under the guise of being a necessary implement in America’s
war against cyber attacks.

The vague verbiage contained within the
pages of the paper could allow Congress to circumvent existing
exemptions to online privacy laws and essentially monitor, censor and
stop any online communication that it considers disruptive to the
government or private parties.

Critics have already come after CISPA for
the capabilities that it will give to seemingly any federal entity that
claims it is threatened by online interactions, but unlike the Stop
Online Privacy Act and the Protect IP Acts that were discarded on the
Capitol Building floor after incredibly successful online campaigns to
crush them, widespread recognition of what the latest would-be law will
do has yet to surface to the same degree.

Kendall Burman of the
Center for Democracy and Technology tells RT that Congress is currently
considering a number of cyber security bills that could eventually be
voted into law, but for the group that largely advocates an open
Internet, she warns that provisions within CISPA are reason to worry
over what the realities could be if it ends up on the desk of President
Barack Obama.

So far CISPA has been introduced, referred and reported by
the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and expects to go
before a vote in the first half of Congress within the coming weeks.

“We
have a number of concerns with something like this bill that creates
sort of a vast hole in the privacy law to allow government to receive
these kinds of information,” explains Burman, who acknowledges that
the bill, as written, allows the US government to involve itself into
any online correspondence, current exemptions notwithstanding, if it
believes there is reason to suspect cyber crime.

As with other
authoritarian attempts at censorship that have come through Congress in
recent times, of course, the wording within the CISPA allows for the
government to interpret the law in such a number of degrees that any
online communication or interaction could be suspect and thus
unknowingly monitored.

In a press release penned last month by the CDT, the group warned then that CISPA allows Internet Service Providers to “funnel private communications and related information back to the government without adequate privacy protections and controls.

The
bill does not specify which agencies ISPs could disclose customer data
to, but the structure and incentives in the bill raise a very real
possibility that the National Security Agency or the DOD’s Cyber Command
would be the primary recipient,” reads the warning.

The
Electronic Frontier Foundation, another online advocacy group, has also
sharply condemned CISPA for what it means for the future of the
Internet. “It effectively creates a ‘cyber security’’ exemption to all existing laws,” explains the EFF, who add in a statement of their own that “There
are almost no restrictions on what can be collected and how it can be
used, provided a company can claim it was motivated by ‘cyber security
purposes.’”

What does that mean? Both the EFF and CDT say an
awfully lot. Some of the biggest corporations in the country, including
service providers such as Google, Facebook, Twitter or ATT, could
copy confidential information and send them off to the Pentagon if
pressured, as long as the government believes they have reason to
suspect wrongdoing.

In a summation of their own, the Congressional
Research Service, a nonpartisan arm of the Library of Congress, explains
that “efforts to degrade, disrupt or destroy” either “a system or network of a government or private entity” is reason enough for Washington to reach in and read any online communiqué of their choice.

The authors of CISPA say the bill has been made “To
provide for the sharing of certain cyber threat intelligence and cyber
threat information between the intelligence community and cyber security
entities,” but not before noting that the legislation could be used “and for other purposes,” as well — which, of course, are not defined.

“Cyber security, when done right and done narrowly, could benefit everyone,” Burman tells RT. “But
it needs to be done in an incremental way with an arrow approach, and
the heavy hand that lawmakers are taking with these current bills . . .
it brings real serious concerns.”

So far CISPA has garnered
support from over 100 representatives in the House who are favoring this
cyber security legislation without taking into considerations what it
could do to the everyday user of the Internet.

While the backlash
created by opponents of SOPA and PIPA has not materialized to the same
degree yet, Burman warns Congress that it could be only a matter of time
before concerned Americans step up to have their say.

“One of
the lessons we learned in the reaction to SOPA and PIPA is that when
Congress tries to legislate on things that are going to affect Internet
users’ experience, the Internet users are going to pay attention,” says Burman.

H.R. 3523, she cautions, “Definitely could affect in a very serious way the internet experience.” Luckily, adds Burman, “People are starting to notice.”

Given the speed that the latest censorship bill could sneak through
Congress, however, anyone concerned over the future of the Internet
should be on the lookout for CISPA as it continues to be considered on
Capitol Hill.

April 4, 2012 – RussiaToday

diggmutidel.icio.usgoogleredditfacebook