Son of SOPA

New cybersharing bill poses same threat to liberty as defeated measure

“CISPA lacks any meaningful limitations on the ways in which the federal government may use personal information and the content of private communications that it receives from private companies.”

Howard Rich
The Washington Times
4/25/2012

Having failed earlier this year to foist an Orwellian kill switch on Internet free speech, Congress is now peddling a kinder, gentler piece of “cybersecurity legislation.” However, Washington’s latest attempt to play Big Brother on the Internet poses an equally clear and present danger to our fundamental liberties.

With the furor over the Stop Online Piracy Act having subsided, congressional leaders apparently are hoping that the ire of America’s burgeoning information freedom movement has been exhausted. They’re also hoping that the same coalition that successfully shot down the Piracy Act won’t notice the sinister outlines of its latest alphabet soup invasion – the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA). In fact, they’ve enlisted the help of heavy hitters such as Facebook and Microsoft in an effort to convince us that the Web is somehow on-board with this latest example of unchecked government intrusion into our private lives.

Nothing could be further from the truth…

…Once your private information has been passed on to the government without your knowledge or consent – and with no way to right the wrong – there is absolutely no limit to how Big Brother can use it…

The complete article is at The Washington Times.

Related: Violence Against Women Act Is A Trojan Horse For Measures Attacking Online Free Speech

Update: In an email received today from Americans for Limited Government:

…”This sweeping amendment by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee would allow the Department of Homeland Security Secretary, a political appointee, to monitor the nation’s entire digital infrastructure. There are no communications that do not ‘transit to’ or through existing Federal systems including those run by the FCC, and based on recent disclosures by NSA whistleblower William Binney, there are no communications that are not ‘stored on’ Federal systems in some way.

“That means every communication in the world would be accessible by the Secretary of Homeland Security. And since it also includes all communications on Federal systems, that would include all congressional correspondence, all congressional inquiries into anything, all internal White House communications, all sealed federal court documents, all military communications, and all intelligence gathering in the world. In short, all of the most sensitive top secret and privileged information would funnel to a politically appointed official who may be tempted to misuse it.

“The Secretary need only certify that acquiring the information is necessary to counter cybersecurity threats. Since the Secretary will have no way of knowing which information will be relevant to that purpose until the data is filtered and analyzed, she will have to acquire it all in the process.

“Once acquired, the amendment even allows the information to be used beyond the purview of protecting national security or against cyber threats. Under Lee’s amendment, ‘information obtained pursuant to activities authorized under this subsection will … be retained, used, or disclosed… with the approval of the Attorney General, for law enforcement purposes when the information is evidence of a crime which has been, is being, or is about to be committed.’ Suddenly, the nation’s vast intelligence and military infrastructure will be at the fingertips of the Department of Justice to be used for targeted, malicious, political prosecutions.”…

Recent disclosures by former NSA official William Binney on Democracy Now challenge that assumption in an alarming fashion. By Binney’s account, not only has the government been gathering intelligence domestically on U.S. citizens for some years now by monitoring the entire network, but that it has already developed a vast database of most every electronic communication in the world. CISPA does not address these concerns at all…

To read more and to use the site’s “take action” links, go to GetLiberty.org

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