back to article White House issues privacy warning on CISPA-style laws

The White House has struck a pro-privacy stance on online security legislation such as the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), which comes up for vote in the US House of Representatives next week. "The nation’s critical infrastructure cyber vulnerabilities will not be addressed by information sharing alone …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The mail sniffers waste more money

    Looks like all that money Google spent on lobbying was a waste. A bit like Moto

    http://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-increases-lobbying-budget/39168/

  2. Neil Greatorex

    If

    ISP/Google/Yahoo!/whoever, selected one of the 100 politicians who support this, at random, and publish _everything_ they have on that politician, this nonsense would be brought to a halt pretty sharpish.

  3. AnonymousNow
    Stop

    what is the essence of fascism??

    "CISPA would allow ISPs, social networking sites, and anyone else handling Internet communications to monitor users and pass information to the government without any judicial oversight," said EFF Activism Director Rainey Reitman in a statement. "The language of this bill is dangerously vague, so that personal online activity – from the mundane to the intimate – could be implicated."

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: what is the essence of fascism??

      What google wants - total control

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: what is the essence of fascism??

        Wikipedia (cos I'm lazy): "Fascists seek rejuvenation of their nation based on commitment to an organic national community where its individuals are united together as one people in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood..."

        I'm not sure google is that interested in the above.

        Abhorrent though fascism is, I miss the days when politicians offered more than "management" and fear-mongering. When that is all the leaders offer, isn't it obvious that thinking only of your wallet is an attitude which percolates down into society?

  4. Reallydo Wannaknow
    Facepalm

    Wait ... What?

    The current USA government is now against laws that might infringe on people's civil liberties? Bad is double-plus good?

    1. Tom 13

      Re: Wait ... What?

      Not at all. What we have in this article is your proto-typical leftist engaging in slight of hand to promote The Big 0's agenda. He is of course aided and abetted by certain foaming at the mouth activists who want you to never actually read the text of this very, very short bill to see what it actually says. I am of the opinion that this is because behind the scenes they are pushing the mother of all SOPA bills (you know, the one that hasn't been withdrawn in the Senate and actually contains the Internet "kill switch" provision: the Lieberman-Collins bill. ref: http://thehill.com/blogs/hillicon-valley/technology/222447-house-republican-leaders-rebuff-white-house-push-for-cyber-regs ).

      From the text of the actual CISPA bill:

      (2) USE AND PROTECTION OF INFORMATION- Cyber threat information shared in accordance with paragraph (1)--

      (A) shall only be shared in accordance with any restrictions placed on the sharing of such information by the protected entity or self-protected entity authorizing such sharing, including appropriate anonymization or minimization of such information;

      (B) may not be used by an entity to gain an unfair competitive advantage to the detriment of the protected entity or the self-protected entity authorizing the sharing of information; and

      (C) if shared with the Federal Government--

      (i) shall be exempt from disclosure under section 552 of title 5, United States Code;

      (ii) shall be considered proprietary information and shall not be disclosed to an entity outside of the Federal Government except as authorized by the entity sharing such information; and

      (iii) shall not be used by the Federal Government for regulatory purposes.

      Which means any agency cooperating with the government can properly anonymize your data before it gets passed along. What the bill does do is provide a legally protected path to share information that can be used to secure the internet.

      Full text from which I quoted is here:

      http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/112/hr3523/text

  5. Fibbles
    Black Helicopters

    tongue, cheek, etc

    The excuse used by those in power for taking away the rights of their citizens during the naughties was 'The War On Terror™'. This decade the excuse looks as if it's going to be 'cyber threats'. The threats may be real, but inevitably they'll be blown out of proportion to force through legislation that does away with those pesky civil liberties.

    I do wonder if those in power have made a bit of an error with this one though. I'm sure the whole idea of 'cyber threats' sounded nicely vague and ominous when they were hatching these plans but whereas the public generally know f--- all about the middle east and can be made to fear it, they're slightly more clued up when it comes to the internet.

    I'm off to go line my house with tinfoil in case cyberwarfare breaks out.

  6. Eddy Ito
    Big Brother

    Huh, wha????

    "The White House has struck a pro-privacy stance on online security legislation"

    Where am I? Is this Bizarro? Who is in the White House and what have they done to the President? Could this be the break from intrusive tyranny we've been waiting for? Need some tequila and a lay down to try and make sense of this...

    Oh wait, they want more control, for their benefit not ours, over their corporate informant lackeys. Whew, for a second I thought the executive branch was actually giving a shit about the average Joe. Good to know things haven't really changed but I could still use that tequila but don't worry, a single malt will do.

    1. Ian Michael Gumby
      Holmes

      Re: Huh, wha????

      Its an election year.

  7. WonkoTheSane
    Trollface

    @Flibble

    I thought it was called "The War Against Terror"?

    At least that's what I've thought of every politician since...

  8. JaitcH
    FAIL

    And the winner is ... Bin Laden

    When you consider how the sanctity of the U.S. Constitution has been serially violated;how people have lost any pretence of privacy; how (in the UK) you can be jailed for not divulging a password; how much this 'security theatre' is costing and what government programs for deserving people have suffered, I find it very hard to accept the US, or any country, have 'won'.

    One man, and a pile of his money, have changed the world dramatically no matter what your perspective is, religious or otherwise,

    How many 'terrorists', real or imagined, have been caught by those millions of CCTV cameras that record the daily minutia of Brits going about their daily business, BEFORE an atrocity? And don't even suggest those FBI set-up jobs are anything more than theatre.

    As I said, IMHO, Bin Laden won, hands down.

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

  9. cortland
    Big Brother

    "Entirely voluntary, sir," he said, tapping the rubber hose cosh persuasively ...

  10. Tony Paulazzo
    Alien

    >In a closed session Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, FBI Director Robert Mueller, National Security Agency Director Keith Alexander and Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence Stephanie O'Sullivan briefed the politicos on the current state of the cyberwar.<

    The lot of them should go get real fricking jobs. The betterment of humanity is ill served by these fear mongers. Splitters!

    'The Peoples Front of Judea.'

  11. Keep Refrigerated
    Devil

    Trojan Amendments

    Protest from a clued up tech community can be effective, but it's still only a minority compared to mainstream ignorance and/or apathy.

    When I think of what's needed to get these mainstream people to actually understand what is wrong with some of these laws the government tries to introduce, I think protest is the wrong way to go about it.

    What the tech community instead should do is lobby some of these politicians to insert some last minute overnight amendments like all the proposed legislation also retroactively applies to mail/vehicles/homes.

    Then the bill either gets dropped or vetoed because it's unpalatable, or the bill gets passed and mainstream get literal taste of what the tech community has only been able to express in analogy up until that point.

  12. charlie-charlie-tango-alpha
    Stop

    no such thing

    "In a closed session Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, FBI Director Robert Mueller, National Security Agency Director Keith Alexander and Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence Stephanie O'Sullivan briefed the politicos on the current state of the cyberwar."

    What war?

    A plea to the Reg if I may. Whilst it might suit the americans (and some people in the UK) to talk about internet based "attacks" as constituting a war, there is no such war and the public is ill served by the media reporting in a manner which suggests there is.

    Please stop it.

    1. Gannon (J.) Dick
      Pint

      Re: no such thing

      I agree, not a front, maybe more like the Axis arguing with the Allies over the Czech Gold, which was in a bank vault in London the whole time. The weapons for the next war are under development, and it's looking very much like a Fahrenheit 451 affair. I hope I'm assigned something interesting to memorize and not my own genome.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: no such thing

      Yeah, right you just keep telling yourself there are no cyber wars and China isn't hacking the UK or the U.S. or industry or banks. That works real well when a hacker cleans out your bank account, steals your I.D. and your life is turned upside down for years. Just repeat the mantra: "There is no internet war, it's all a lie".

      It's sad to think people are THIS naive.

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