CISPA: Congress Takes Another Run at the Internet

Once upon a time there was a bill called SOPA.  Some evil trolls who worked and conducted meetings in a big domed building in Washington DC tried to make a wicked law to allow them to close people's internet-based businesses and websites whenever they wanted, for the silliest of reasons, much to the delight of the head ogre who lived in a big White House. The people of the land all stood up angrily and complained to fight against the law, and through their efforts, defeated the trolls and the head ogre.  The laws of the internet remained fair, the trolls were duly chastened, the ogre pretended benevolence and the people lived happily ever after, internet freedoms intact.....

Well.....until the dragon CISPA reared it's ugly head. 

As we predicted here, the government has been busily creating a law to "protect" us from cyber-attacks like the one recently threatened by Anonymous.

The stated purpose of CISPA is "To provide for the sharing of certain cyber threat intelligence and cyber threat information between the intelligence community and cybersecurity entities, and for other purposes."

(Personally, my favorite line in that statement is "and for other purposes." It sets the ambiguous tone for the rest of the bill.)

The outrages that are blatantly laid out in CISPA (The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act) are bad enough, but the vagueness of the language takes the intrusion to a level previously unheard of in a country born of the blood of Patriots and allegedly protected by the Constitution.

CISPA allows "cyber entities"  (internet service providers, social networks and cell phone companies, to name a few examples) to circumvent internet privacy laws.  In an interview with Russia Today, Kendall Burman of the Center for Democracy and Technology stated that, "the bill, as written, allows the US government to involve itself into any online correspondence... 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."


The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights advocacy group, states, "It effectively creates a ‘cybersecurity'’ exemption to all existing laws...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 ‘cybersecurity purposes."

In the spirit of making things clear, the bill contains several definitions that only add to the general air of vagueness.

CYBER THREAT INTELLIGENCE ~ "information pertaining to protecting a system or network from—(A) efforts to degrade, disrupt, or destroy such system or network; or (B) theft or misappropriation of private or government information, intellectual property, or personally identifiable information."

SELF-PROTECTED ENTITY ~ "an entity, other than an individual, that provides goods or services for cyber security purposes to itself."

PROTECTED ENTITY ~ "‘protected entity’ means an entity, other than an individual, that contracts with a cybersecurity provider for goods or services to be used for cybersecurity purposes."

"Cybersecurity" is not defined in the document.

So it's clear, CISPA will allow for the surveillance and interception of your personal correspondence by the government, email providers, cell phone providers, internet service providers and social networks, to name just a few of the allowable snoopers.

Despite the fact that the bill specifically states that entities cannot use the powers granted "to gain an unfair competitive advantage" one must wonder how a profit can be made via CISPA, especially after the corporate outcry against SOPA, which would have greatly restricted the activities of computer and communications companies.  Companies like Facebook, AT&T and Verizon have jumped on the CISPA bandwagon with both feet.

In a letter to Congress, Facebook VP Joel Kaplan wrote, "Your thoughtful bipartisan approach will enhance the ability of companies like Facebook to address cyberthreats.....Your legislation removes burdensome rules that can currently inhibit protection of the cyber-ecosystem."

Fred Humphries, a Microsoft VP commended Congress in a statement.  "The legislation would seek to eliminate barriers and disincentives that currently prevent effective information-sharing to guard against cyber-attacks."

The United States Chamber of Commerce VP Bruce Josten stated the group's support of CISPA as "an important step in assisting the nation’s public and private sectors to prevent, deter, and mitigate the array of cyber threats from illicit actors without imposing burdensome regulations on industry."

The following companies have all written letters of support for CISPA (you can read the letters by clicking on the name of each company).

AT&T
Boeing
BSA
Business Roundtable
CSC
COMPTEL
CTIA - The Wireless Association
Cyber, Space & Intelligence Association
Edison Electric
EMC
Exelon
Facebook
The Financial Services Roundtable
IBM
Independent Telephone & Telecommunications Alliance
Information Technology Industry Council
Intel
Internet Security Alliance
Lockheed Martin
Microsoft
National Cable & Telecommunications Association
NDIA
Oracle
Symantec
TechAmerica
US Chamber of Commerce
US Telecom - The Broadband Association
Verizon

 

We managed to keep SOPA off the desk of Barack Obama (who we can reliably predict will sign CISPA into law with the glee of a tyrannical zealot.)  Let's keep the momentum going by stepping up to the plate as activists again.

You can find email and mailing addresses for the companies above on their letterhead when you read their glowing commendations for CISPA.  Write to them and let them know that your dollars will not be spent with them, either now or in the future, unless they publicly withdraw their support for this bill.

You can find the email addresses of your members of Congress HERE. 

Sources:

Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011

US House of Representatives Information on CISPA

New CISPA Cybersecurity Bill Will Censor the Web

Anonymous: Cyber-Superheroes or Master Manipulators?

The Patriot Resistance is looking for a hero.

Anonymous, the group of hacker activists, has applied for the position. 

Their resume includes hacking the US Federal Trade Commission and taking down the Department of Justice website.  They send sternly worded warnings before the cyber-attacks take place.  It's the kind of thing that makes the rest of us yearn to learn Linux and code so that we can participate in the fun.

But are we jumping on a bandwagon designed to take us for a quick ride to the closest Fema Re-education Center?  Is Anonymous actually on our side, or is the group actually a psy-ops plant - an agent  provocateur?



The members of Anonymous have set themselves up as the cyber-Robin Hoods of the internet.  They have issued a statement informing the world of their plan to take down the 'net this Saturday.

“To protest SOPA, Wallstreet, our irresponsible leaders and the beloved bankers who are starving the world for their own selfish needs out of sheer sadistic fun, on March 31, anonymous will shut the Internet down.”

The attack will target the Domain Name Servers, which will make it impossible to reach a destination on the net without knowing the actual IP address of that website.

In the spirit of resistance, I'd like to applaud any effort to slow down the efforts of the global elite and the de facto government (or at the very least, really annoy them). HOWEVER......................

This reeks of the CO-INTEL program. "COINTELPRO (an acronym for Counter Intelligence Program) was a series of covert, and often illegal, projects conducted by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) aimed at surveiling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting domestic political organizations."

I'm far from the only person who is suspicious of Anonymous. While it's a topic of conjecture, there are too many links to federal agencies for me to be on the Hackers R Us bandwagon.

Remember how quickly the unPatriot Act followed the 9/11 attacks?  It only took 6 weeks for that particular attack on our Constitutional rights to pass through the Congress to the desk of President Bush. 

The internet take-down (if it does indeed occur on Saturday) will be a false flag event that will allow the de facto government to come up with a new internet unPatriot Act law.  The new restrictions will make SOPA, PIPA and ACTA look like games at a Libertarian Party picnic.  By exposing the vulnerability of our grid and our financial systems, the de facto government will frighten people into believing the coming censorship is, as always, "for our own good."

Another clue that Anonymous is not what it presents itself to be is the group's visibility in the mainstream media.  Every recent event that supports the viewpoint of Patriot America has been blacked out by Public Enemy #1, the mainstream media.  Alternatively, any event that can be twisted for use as NWO and de facto government ammunition against our freedom has blown up the nightly news. The propaganda machine has churned out imaginary threats and justified unconstitutional actions with a condescending pat on the head.

Thinking critically, do you really believe that an outright threat towards the government currently in power would be all over the news if it was legitimate?  Would the propaganda machine actually be allowed to air a story in which the de facto government looked like it could be defeated or harmed, unless that story could be used for the purpose of restricting us further?

The US government has been taking pages from Mein Kampf.  In his magnum opus, Adolf Hitler, e greatest manipulator of the masses who has ever lived, said  "By the skillful and sustained use of propaganda, one can make people see even heaven as hell, or an extremely wretched life as paradise.

 

The PTB are taking our need for a hero and providing us with one of their own making.  They are endorsing media coverage of the bogeyman terrorist in order to take away more of our rights.  Americans are being spoonfed false and biased stories through the media, and are being led by the hand to the conclusions that they are meant to reach. 

Anonymous, please don't hack me for saying this, but I am deeply skeptical of your origins and your ultimate goal.

Our defense against propaganda is our skepticism and our ability to think critically.  Don't believe anything without proof.  If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.

Back in 322 BC, Demosthenes, a Greek orator and politician summed it up.

There are all kinds of devices invented for the protection and preservation of countries: defensive barriers, forts, trenches, and the like... But prudent minds have as a natural gift one safeguard which is the common possession of all, and this applies especially to the dealings of democracies. What is this safeguard? Skepticism. This you must preserve. This you must retain. If you can keep this, you need fear no harm.

NinaO:  Thank you!