CISPA would not have given federal agencies unlimited access to private data. That's the argument this site leads with, and it is a deeply dishonest one.
That was worthless. It starts with hyperbole, and the closest it comes to an argument is that a prior version of the bill was bad and so we need to stop this version--which is not much of an argument.
I do agree with your sentiment, however, while the argument is weak, it does make sense. I'm as wary of jumping on bandwagons as any of you are, and while the fear-mongering could be laid off a bit, many different news sources confirm that this is really happening.
When 'tzs says "a prior version was so bad" --- a point that many people dispute --- what he is saying is that the bill that actually got voted on by the full house had none of the characteristics this site imputes to it. So, no, the argument does not make sense.
Why don't they write anything about the actual contents of CISPA? I went looking in Wikipedia, and noticed that:
"CISPA is supported by several trade groups containing more than eight hundred private companies ... in addition to individual major telecommunications and information technology companies like ... Facebook ..." [1]
Because CISPA promises (a) to allow Facebook to receive threat intelligence from the federal government, which collects massive amounts of it in ways that it is currently forbidden by statute to share, and (b) to allow Facebook to coordinate with Google and AT&T to track down attacks without worrying that someone's bogus interpretation of ECPA will land it in court for 5 years.
There are (faulty) readings of ECPA that would suggest that (say) Facebook providing NetFlow data to AT&T to help squelch a DDoS attack would constitute an unlawful sharing of private data.
Given the thematic resonance with folks who identify with Anonymous I wonder if this site is trolling. Lots of people have figured out that its very baity and not very factual so one has to ask, what is its real purpose?
I like Snowwrestler's comment that its an attempt a building a mailing list for later political action, that is very optimistic. Given the state of the world and the not so low level annoyances for people with means that various hacktivists have inspired or created one wonders if this might be a partial response.
We just got another demonstration that when the federal government sets its sights are arming Jihadists on American soil they can find someone stupid enough to take them up on it. [1]
The point of this website is to convince you to put your contact information in, so that you can later be asked to give money and votes.
This is, in political terms, a customer acquisition strategy. CISPA is merely the "power word" they hope will create enough emotional response that you'll fill out the form.
(This is primarily what the campaign against CISPA always was. You can tell because the Senate cyber bill was far more intrusive, but the anti-CISPA groups did not campaign against it.)
We sure did campaign against the Cybersecurity Act.
However, the Senate was a lot more of an inside game strategy. We focused on an amendment strategy through Sen. Franken's and Sen. Paul's offices (my primary contact was with Sen. Franken's staff): https://www.eff.org/pages/no-digital-big-brother-keep-milita...
The feeling was that we couldn't stop the Cybersecurity Act after CISPA won the House, but we could improve it enough to make the final result slightly less awful. We wanted both acts dead.
We were entirely wrong though. Business interests killed Cybersecurity because of questions of mandates vs. voluntary buy-in. With opposition led by the Chamber of Commerce, the Senate bill died twice to filibusters. Privacy never became an important part of the debate, sadly.
PS - None of this disputes OP's very valid points about the purpose of the site and customer acquisition. However, FFtF is not trying to corral our votes, it's trying to direct our energy away from social media (which DC considers noise) to effective phone calls to our elected officials. Yes, they use their mailing lists to raise funds through donations. So does EFF and other groups engaged on open internet issues.
Fight for the Future put this page together quickly as an immediate response to CISPA being back on the table. There certainly could be more info on the site, but there is also plenty out there that you can research yourself. This is a site to take immediate action if you feel so inclined. If not, go read up and there will be more chances to take action soon.
"In its previous form, the bill would have given federal agencies unlimited access to virtually any of my personal data and online communication-- without a warrant."
No, it would not have. Even had it not been designed to do essentially the opposite, it couldn't have, because it was an opt-in measure. Being in a hurry does not excuse this level of wrongness.
I found it rather interesting that they didn't include any text from or links to the bill at all -- if any is even available. This, to me, is the biggest red flag.
Yeah, this "CISPA is back" page doesn't seem to contain much info about what's new with CISPA. Here are the two news reports from yesterday about this new cybersecurity bill:
I posted this on the White House "Contact Us" webpage:
"I received notice on a technology message board that CISPA is being reintroduced with an executive order. The previous bill, which was shot down a few years ago, would have infringed upon our God-granted rights. Now that it is being reinstated, I wanted to express my concern for the citizens of America, who, with every day, and every tick of the clock, are subject to a more powerful and potentially tyrannical government that is eroding their privacy and rights one by one.
I would also like to express to the administration that they are merely public servants, and nothing more. The citizens of the United States are their rulers, not vice versa. This administration, and the previous Republican one, are by far the worst in terms of right infringement. The PATRIOT Act, the Section 1021 of the NDAA 2012, and now CISPA have all but erased the privacy of American citizens.
They may not mind now, but the American citizens know about their government. We the people of the United States are not blind. We can see through the smoke and mirrors that the bars of government continue to put up. If you erode our rights, we will be upset. And when we are upset, you will lose your jobs, your credibility, your haughtiness, and your confidence.
Remember, a volcano never stays dormant forever."
Any thoughts? Or should I just start one of those seemingly useless petitions on WhiteHouse.gov?
Feel free to use the above text if you're going to contact your senators or the like.
Call your representatives. Seriously, honestly, call them up and explain it to the staffer who answers the phone. Make sure to let them know that you are a voting member of your district and express your opinions politely and confidently. They really do listen to what their constituency has to say, which is a large part of why younger generation's interests are rarely represented. The older generations are actually communicating with their representatives rather than fire-and-forget style of voting. A trip to their office is the most powerful for communicating how you feel, a phone call next, a written letter next and an email is basically a "I don't care much" type message.
While you won't reach your representative directly, the staffers do pass on the feedback to the representative (each office is different, some will read each piece of mail while others only get summaries of what people in general are communicating about).
A representative democracy works only when you actually communicate to your representative what your interests are.
I just wanted to post real quick to say that I have experience calling my congressman and talking with staffers politely but confidently and can confirm that they did indeed take my opinions and ideas very seriously, or at least gave me the impression that they did.
The point of the petitions on whitehouse.gov is to get your view seen by other people and perhaps get some answer from some official under the executive. If that's good enough for you, do it. If you believe that posting a petition on whitehouse.gov and getting a few thousand people to "Like" it should automatically result in legislation, or an official saying what you agree with, then don't bother.
> If you believe that posting a petition on whitehouse.gov and getting a few thousand people to "Like" it should automatically result in legislation, or an official saying what you agree with
That's not what I believe at all. I'm just saying that there needs to be a less broad approach to CISPA and that there needs to be a more clear explanation as to what exactly can or cannot be tracked, because with the current legislation, indefinite snooping of innocent individuals is possible under it.
The bill itself is fine. It is by no means the same as SOPA or PIPA, but it's also poorly written and allows companies and the U.S. Government to exploit citizens. That's what people need to get attention to. The website that this post links to is misleading; look at some other sources of information to see what really is going on.
How does did CISPA allow companies to "exploit citizens"?
When you answer that, try to capture what it was that companies couldn't do before CISPA and could have done after CISPA, and how they'd have had any incentive to use CISPA as their vector to do those things.
The people do have a say--it's just people like my mom and not whoever you apparently think should be making the rules. They see "someone hacked the Fed!"[1] on TV and think we need CISPA. Maybe they are wrong, maybe they are right, but the U.S. is quite structured in the direction of rule by the majority, not rule by the technocrati.
[1] By and large, they also don't care about their privacy, as the popularity of Google, Facebook, Instagram, etc, attests to.
I don't disagree with your sentiment, but you are _greatly_ oversimplifying the issue. Politics is a complex system of public and private relationships. If there's an imbalance of power, it's not because Obama is King.
