Danger: Senate Passes CISA Bill Warrantless Surveillance of Domestic Citizens!
Wednesday, October 28, 2015 1:06
In the first video below, YouTube reporter Redsilverj says to WAKE UP! After years of trying, the Senate FINALLY managed to pass a WARRANTLESS domestic surveillance bill by a vote of 74-21. This bill is NOT a new one. The Senate has been trying to pass it for years, but has previously been called CISPA. Anyone who’s been following long enough may remember the following two posts as far back as 2013:
Don’t expect the Mainstream Media to report on what a gross violation of the 4th Amendment the bill is either. The 4th Amendment reads:
Of course you can expect to here the talking heads on television say how lucky we are to have such thoughtful and caring senators looking out for us (if they mention it at all), because the bill is intended to “keep us safe” from terrorism or some nonsense like that. Just remember two things: 1) It’s not spying on terrorists. It’s spying on YOU; and 2) Don’t you forget who the government considers a terrorist these days. Recently We Learned That If You Speak Out Against Obama’s the Department of Injustice, YOU May Be Considered a Terrorist (Videos). Not that long ago, under Eric holder, the DOJ Created an Obama Gestapo To Target Americans With “Anti-Government Views.”
Big government progressives, whether they are Democrat or Republican, always use the same template to get crap like this or new gun regulations passed:
In the second video, you’ll learn that yesterday was the final vote on CISA, a Senate Vill that would allow corporations to freely share private information with the government. While it is packaged as a way to fight cyber crimes, the problem lies in the fact that this gives the alphabet soup agencies more tools to spy on American citizens. In essence, it is another attempt to control the internet, and legalize the surveillance state. As if big government wasn’t messing with your online rights enough as it is in ways most people have no idea is coming, Obama won’t stop until ha has TOTAL control. For more on the abominations that have already passed see the links at the bottom.
The Guardian reports:
FOR MORE ON ALREADY PASSED LEGISLATION COMING AFFECTING YOU SOON:
IF YOU’VE FORGOTTEN ABOUT THE PREVIOUS NSA SCANDALS:
Don’t expect the Mainstream Media to report on what a gross violation of the 4th Amendment the bill is either. The 4th Amendment reads:
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
To break that down a little, according to our Constitution, you know, the document Obama doesn’t give a rip about, for a person to be searched, or have something of theirs seized, FIRST a warrant is required (go figure, right?). The two core requirements for a facially valid search warrant are PROBABLE CAUSE and PARTICULARITY. The legal standard for probable cause is that there must be a “fair probability that contraband or evidence of a CRIME will be found when the area is searched.” The legal standard for particularity requires that the warrant state “with particularity the PLACE to be searched, and the ITEM TO BE SEIZED.” Immediately, it should be obvious to a third grader that a domestic surveillance bill that goes “fishing for information on citizens when there is no probable cause” is BLATANTLY unconstitutional. In fact, it doesn’t even exist in a “grey zone” between black and white. It’s bright neon fuchsia it’s so unconstitutional. Make no mistake about it, as Craig Hulet said in an interview, The U.S. Government is Now the “World’s Most Dangerous Terrorist Organization!” By now, we all know Obama could care less what is legal or not. Of course you can expect to here the talking heads on television say how lucky we are to have such thoughtful and caring senators looking out for us (if they mention it at all), because the bill is intended to “keep us safe” from terrorism or some nonsense like that. Just remember two things: 1) It’s not spying on terrorists. It’s spying on YOU; and 2) Don’t you forget who the government considers a terrorist these days. Recently We Learned That If You Speak Out Against Obama’s the Department of Injustice, YOU May Be Considered a Terrorist (Videos). Not that long ago, under Eric holder, the DOJ Created an Obama Gestapo To Target Americans With “Anti-Government Views.”
Big government progressives, whether they are Democrat or Republican, always use the same template to get crap like this or new gun regulations passed:
1. Create the problem, or insert a fake one into the news cycle. A classic example would be the widely publicized fake hacks, like the one at Sony for the movie “The Interview,” or the ones we’ve heard about non-stop lately about government employees. Remember, the spying “Is for your own safety.” Uh… sure.
2. Offer a solution to solve the problem (and the solution ALWAYS involves a way to give THEM more power)
The Guardian reports:
The US Senate overwhelmingly passed a controversial cybersecurity bill critics say will allow the government to collect sensitive personal data unchecked, over the objections of civil liberties groups and many of the biggest names in the tech sector.
The vote on Tuesday was 74 to 21 in support of the legislation. Democratic presidential contender Bernie Sanders voted against the bill. None of the Republican presidential candidates (except Lindsey Graham, who voted in favor) were present to cast a vote, including Rand Paul, who has made privacy from surveillance a major plank of his campaign platform.
Ahead of the vote a group of university professors specializing in tech law, many from the Princeton Center for Information Technology Policy, sent an open letter to the Senate, urging them not to pass the bill. The bill, they wrote, would fatally undermine the Freedom of Information Act (Foia).
Led by Princeton’s David S Levine, the group joined a chorus of critics including many of the largest technology companies, notably Apple, and National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower Edward Snowden in calling for Cisa to be scrapped.
We’ll name the names of people who voted in favor afterwards. A vote for #CISA is a vote against the internet. https://t.co/IctF0UYSO6
Cisa would “allow ‘voluntary’ sharing of heretofore private information with the government, allowing secret and ad hoc privacy intrusions in place of meaningful consideration of the privacy concerns of all Americans,” the professors wrote.
“The Freedom of Information Act would be neutralized, while a cornucopia of federal agencies could have access to the public’s heretofore private-held information with little fear that such sharing would ever be known to those whose information was shared.”
Despite protestations that Cisa was not a surveillance bill, co-sponsors Richard Burr and Dianne Feinstein discouraged their colleagues from voting for amendments to mitigate what senators called unreasonable invasions of privacy, including one notifying citizens that their data was being examined. Amendments from Ron Wyden, Al Franken, Patrick Leahy, Dean Heller and Chris Coons all failed, though Wyden’s failed by a very narrow vote.
The American Banking Association and the Telecommunications Industry Association (TIA) applauded the passage of the bill. “The legislation passed by the Senate today bolsters our cyber defenses by providing the liability protections needed to encourage the voluntary sharing of cyber threat information,” the TIA said in a statement. “We applaud the Senate for moving this important bill and urge Congressional leaders to act quickly to send this bill to the president’s desk.”
Cisa was negotiated and marked up in secret. Corporate lobbying group The US Chamber of Commerce has been the only consistent champion of the legislation outside the halls of the Senate; the editorial boards of the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post both published opinions in favor of the bill today.
The data in question would come from private industry, which mines everything from credit card statements to prescription drug purchase records to target advertising and tweak product lines. Indeed, much of it is detailed financial and health information the government has never had access to in any form. The bill’s proponents said the data would be “anonymized”.
Cisa would create a program at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) through which corporations could share user data in bulk with several US government agencies. In exchange for participating, the companies would receive complete immunity from Freedom of Information Act requests and regulatory action relating to the data they share. DHS would then share the information throughout the government
Among the bill’s opponents are industry groups representing a broad swath of tech companies, several of which have come out individually against the bill in addition to statements from industry trade groups.
Apple didn’t mince words in its opposition to the proposed law: “We don’t support the current CISA proposal,” the company said in an unattributed statement last week. “The trust of our customers means everything to us and we don’t believe security should come at the expense of their privacy.” Others – Wikimedia, Reddit, Salesforce, DropBox – issued similar statements.
Quietly, though, many major tech sector players are staying on the sidelines. After accusations that the company had been informally calling senators to say they wouldn’t oppose the bill, Facebook said it had not lobbied in Cisa’s favor, but that it did not have a public stance on it. Microsoft and Google, too, have been notable by their silence, though trade associations representing them have publicly objected to the bill
Facebook has its own threat-sharing program; others within the industry do, too. The program created by Cisa wouldn’t be of much use to them – private industry is widely acknowledged to be further down this road than the government – but regulatory and Foia immunity could come in handy.
The bill must next pass the House of Representatives, a procedure that will likely be much quicker and smoother than the opposition it faced in the Senate from Oregon senator Ron Wyden, among others. Then it must be negotiated by the House and the Senate and then likely passed in a package with two others.
Atypically, security researchers have come out against Cisa, as well, saying it would do little to improve surveillance and would instead spread user information broadly across a threadbare patchwork of government IT systems. Mending that patchwork and others like it in private industry, said researcher Brian Krebs on his blog, Krebs on Security, is a much surer way to improve security.
“While many business leaders fail to appreciate the value and criticality of all their IT assets, I guarantee you today’s cybercrooks know all too well how much these assets are worth,” wrote Krebs. “And this yawning gap in awareness and understanding is evident by the sheer number of breaches announced each week.”
That gap is always going to be worse in the government than in the private sector, information sharing or not, said Jasper Graham, formerly a technical director the NSA.
Even if you mandate something proven to impede data thieves, like public-key infrastructure (PKI) encryption, you’ll hit a wall. “If you say, ‘Everyone now must use PKI!’ you get one small department saying, ‘Actually, we can’t do that,’ and that’s a nightmare.” Graham said. “Regular organizations aren’t really tied to what Donald Trump says tonight in the same way. The government has to do a better job than it’s currently doing, and the best way to do that is to get bipartisan funding.”
Robyn Greene of the New America Foundation characterized the legislation as a “do-something” bill. “The Sony hack really changed the conversation,” Greene said. “You can see that in the way the administration approached cybersecurity – they stopped saying ‘This is is something that has to get done right’ and started saying ‘This is something that has to get done now.’”
FOR MORE ON ALREADY PASSED LEGISLATION COMING AFFECTING YOU SOON:
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