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!

Mysterious Technical Difficulties Plague Alternative News Sites

Alternative news websites seem to be dealing with a mysteriously increased number of technical issues lately.

Yesterday, the popular alternative site Dprogram.Net - Counteracting Propaganda was out of service for most of the afternoon and early evening, with a message saying only "Account Suspended."  According to the administrator of the site, that's the third time this week they've been offline.

Coincidentally, during the same time Dprogram was offline, WhatReallyHappened also suffered from technical concerns, although the outage was far briefer than that of Dprogram.

No one at the sites has cast any stones or suggested that this is all part of a greater conspiracy to silence the truth as alternative websites see it.  (That's just my personal theory,) However, in conjunction with SOPA, ACTA, and the new Google/CIA commitment to collect and provide information about users, as well as direct traffic to more government-friendly websites, one has to begin wondering.

Please show your support for these great alternative websites by visiting them regularly!  Daily they engage in the fight for free, accurate and uncensored information by publishing stories that the mass media wouldn't touch with a ten foot pole. They are true patriots, fighting for freedom through knowledge.

Here are a few more of my favorite sites:

SHTFplan

Alt-market.com

The Intel Hub

Zero Hedge

Info Wars

There are many many more great alternative websites.  Please feel free to share your favorites in the comments section.  The more visits they get the harder it is for mysterious forces to cause them to "disappear."

Obama: I Don't Need No Stinkin' SOPA!!!

Remember how the internet community breathed a deep sigh of relief last week when the House and Senate shelved the SOPA bill due to public outcry?  Remember how Barack Obama vowed to veto the bill if it came across his desk?  Remember how we all suspected that wasn't the last we'd heard of a bill allowing widespread internet censorship?

In one of his sneakiest moves yet, the very same Barack Obama who denounced the SOPA bill had already signed a treaty called the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, which makes SOPA look comparatively tame.  This was signed in OCTOBER of 2011!

Obama did an end run around Congress by signing the treaty without their ratification.  Because the treaty is global, there is absolutely no escaping these laws by running your site from a different country or using proxy servers.  He did this by calling it "an executive agreement" instead of a treaty, thus semantically nullifying the requirement for congressional approval.

The powers of ACTA are far broader than the powers of SOPA, and not just geographically.  ACTA allows copyright holders to insist that ISP providers remove content from the internet without a court order.  The agreement also pushes for the power for copyright holders that feel they have been infringed upon to demand that the violators of the intellectual property have the internet connection removed WITHOUT LEGAL REPRESENTATION.

The sticking point for President Sneaky Pants Obama is this:  an executive agreement cannot be signed if the subject matter is under the purview of the Congress.  Intellectual property, thankfully, is protected in the Constitution in Article One, Section 8, as a topic that is the responsibility of Congress.

This is the next step in the battle for internet freedom.  We know that we can't trust the government-and-big-business-owned mass media.  The internet is truly the only place that we can research and learn from alternative independent sources.  The government is controlling all of the information we receive from other sources - it is vital that we keep our internet free of censorship.

Write your congresspersons and let them know your feelings on this.  Let them know that you insist that this be treated as a matter for Congressional ratification.

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

SOPA Pic to Share

SOPA Bill Is Shelved: Score ONE for the People!!!

Massive pressure from the people has caused a veto threat from Washington regarding the treacherous "SOPA" bill. (Stop Online Piracy Act).  The public outcry was big enough that congress has shelved the bill, which was nothing more than a slippery slide towards internet censorship....

Check out the details at SHTFplan

This is a victory for the voices of the people.  It's a victory for every person who wrote to his or her members of congress.  It's a victory for every person that shared blog posts and articles regarding the loss of freedom.  It's a victory for social media users whose hue and cry inundated the net.

Remember this!  Let's keep the momentum of this victory going and continue the fight against those who would silence us.

You Say You Want a Revolution......

Quiet revolutions are springing up everywhere.  There is an uprising afoot that is challenging the new laws because people from all walks of life are saying......

NO MORE

to the United States government.

For example......

HACKERS UNITE.....  With the threat of the SOPA bill making time short, hackers around the world are feverishly working to create a fallback internet infrastructure that cannot be censored.  The Hackerspace Global Grid is being created by some of the best minds in cyberspace.

OVER 100 MILLION FEWER AIR TRAVELERS........Statistics right from the US government show a distinct drop in air travel between 2000 and 2011.  As the TSA Gestapo increases their sexual assault against passengers, more people are choosing other methods of travel,  This definitely affects the economy, as American Airlines is just the latest in a long list to go belly up since 9/11.

MONTANA BEGINS THE PROCESS TO RECALL CONGRESSMEN......After the atrocity of the NDAA passed both the House and the Senate, fed up Montanans pulled out their Constitution and began the process. 

THE OCCUPY MOVEMENT......While you may not agree with the goals or the financial backing, you can't argue with the numbers.  The Occupy movement mobilized people across the world to stand up to the PTB through protests and civil disobedience.  Today the Occupy movement begins their protest against NDAA, and on January 17th begins to Occupy Congress - does anyone else suspect that this might be the first public example of NDAA in action?

ALTERNATIVE MEDIA FIGHTS RON PAUL MEDIA BLACKOUT........When it became glaringly obvious that the mainstream media was doing all it could to ignore Ron Paul as a viable candidate, alternative journalists came out in droves.  He has had more coverage on blogs, Facebook and other social networking sites, and Youtube than any other candidate.  CNN was outed for editing an interview with Dr. Paul in an unflattering way.  FOX and CBS were both blasted online for virtually shunning Dr. Paul during the Republican debates, as it came to light that he received only 89 SECONDS of airtime in a November debate.

Oathkeepers Say No Many peace officers and members of Oathkeepers have signed letters of intent not to carry out orders that are in defiance of the vows they took to "protect and serve", stating that the NDAA is in direct violation of that oath.

A Declaration of the People .....All over the internet patriot bloggers and organizations are posting this declaration that they refuse to accept the unconstitutional act known as the NDAA, and that they will not aggress, but will defend their rights.

Small revolutions are breaking out all over the country as people become more and more outraged at the purposeful erosion of the Constitution by those in power. Find one you can stand behind and take part!  Start your own revolution! 

Be loud and be heard....don't let your freedoms and rights be taken away without a fight!

Anti-SOPA Email Campaign

Please feel free to use the following letter in part or in full to contact your local Senators and Representatives to make your feelings known regarding the SOPA bill that is currently on the table in Congress. A link to the email contact information for every member of congress follows.

Let's make some noise about this!  Let's use the power of alternative media before they take it away from us!



The Honorable (full name)
United States (Senate or House of Representatives)
Washington DC

Dear (proper name, i.e., Senator Smith)

My name is XXXXXX and I am a member of your constituency.  I am a registered voter and am active at every election.  It is my understanding that your purpose in Washington is to represent the wishes of those who elect you.

First, I'd like to tell you how disappointed I am in the passing of the NDAA.  I have a thorough understanding of the legislation and I feel as though this is a black mark against the Constitution.  The reason I am writing you today is to tell you my thoughts on Bill H.R. 3261, the Stop Online Piracy Act.  After contemplation of this document, I feel that it is misnamed as a way to manipulate the people into believing that it is for our own good.  This bill is clearly an attack on the First Amendment and intended to police the internet.  This bill is designed specifically to legalize government censorship.

I urge you to vote AGAINST the passing of the SOPA bill.  Please be assured that I will be checking the roll call on this vote and plan to be very vocal in my support of those who vote against it, or, alternatively, in my criticism of those who vote for it.

I sincerely thank you for taking the time to read this letter.  I hope that I can count on you to protect my rights under the Constitution, and that I can continue to support you as a voter from your electorate.

Respectfully,

XXX XXX

Suggestions:

~   Use your first and last name
~  Don't use profanity or be threatening
~  Be polite

To find the email addresses of your members, check this directory.

Please take a few minutes to send your emails today, and share this post with friends and family.  Let's light up the internet and demand our rights today!

Our voices count!  Let's keep the rights that make America great!

The Internet: The Last Bastion of Free Speech

In the fight for free speech, the internet is the last holdout.  It is the only place that your opinion can be your opinion and can be stated as loudly as you want without fear of repercussions.

But not for long if the US Congress has it's way.....

Much like the treasonous, unconstitutional NDAA, Congress wants to pass another bill to undermine personal freedom and, of course, yet another amendment.  This time they are taking a crack at the 1st amendment with H.R. 3261, the Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA.

By quick and vague definition it makes a lot of sense.  Sheesh, criminals are making a killing stealing music and movie off the internet, when good and decent folks pay for all that!  By golly, it's gotta stop!

My favorite presidential candidate, Senator Ron Paul, disagrees.  See this article to hear more from Dr. Paul on the subject.

But wait....on closer inspection, the legalese in the bill has the potential to eviscerate free speech....and like NDAA, without proof...only with suspicion of "wrong-doing".  It's all about copyright infringement.  If you tick off the powers that be, and you've quoted someone, somewhere, saying something, you may have infringed on their copyright.  As a defendant, you are not even present at the legal proceeding allowing "them" to shut you down until you prove yourself innocent.

How do they shut you down?  Search engines are required to remove you from their listings.  Internet Service Providers can be ordered to block access to your site.  Advertising networks and payment providers can also be forced to cease doing business with you.  This continues until you are proven INNOCENT.  Wait - I thought it was innocent until proven guilty....oh....that was "before" the NDAA.

Not only can SOPA nail you with a felony for "infringing" on a copyright (by doing something as small as playing a clip of a hit song during a photo montage ) - it can get you for "facilitating" infringement, which could be something as small as a hyperlink on your blog.  SOPA also targets address-spoofers and proxies that people around the world use to protect their anonymity.

What can you, as an everyday Jill or Jack, do about this?  How can you see to it that this bill doesn't get out of the House of Representatives?

MAKE SOME NOISE!!!  Take the gloves off.  Share this post and others like it with everyone you know.  Send it to your Representatives and Senators.  Call those same members of congress and let them know that you will be watching their voting records.  Write letters to the editor of your local papers.  USE YOUR VOICES.

Feel free to share all or part of anything you read on my blog to help get the word out!