

The Senate’s SOPA Counterattack? - jdp23
http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/the-senates-sopa-counterattack-cybersecurity-the-undoing-of-privacy/

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CWuestefeld
TL;DR: the key part is in this bit:

“Consistent with the Constitution of the United States and notwithstanding and
other provision of law,” it says (emphasis added), entities may act to
preserve the security of their systems. This means that the only law
controlling their actions would be the Constitution.

It’s nice that the Constitution would apply</sarcasm>, but the obligations in
the Privacy Act of 1974 would not. The Electronic Communications Privacy Act
would be void. Even the requirements of the E-Government Act of 2002, such as
privacy impact assessments, would be swept aside.

~~~
bh42222
Don't forget:

 _The Constitution doesn’t constrain private actors, of course. This language
would immunize them from liability under any and all regulation and under
state or common law. Private actors would not be subject to suit for breaching
contractual promises of confidentiality. They would not be liable for
violating the privacy torts. Anything goes so long as one can make a claim to
defending “information systems,” a term that refers to anything having to do
with computers._

 _Elsewhere, the bill creates an equally sweeping immunity against law-
breaking so long as the law-breaking provides information to a “cybersecurity
exchange.”_

~~~
mikehuffman
Whenever I suspect that politicians might be writing a "power-grab" law, the
one sure way I know to confirm it, is to start looking for immunity clauses.
They know they are doing something bad that would require the "immunity" or
else they wouldn't preemptively put it there.

~~~
CWuestefeld
_Whenever I suspect that politicians might be writing a "power-grab" law, the
one sure way I know to confirm it_

A second way to detect it is to look for the word "bipartisan". If politicians
on both sides support it, there's a very good chance that the group being
screwed is the public.

~~~
anamax
> A second way to detect it is to look for the word "bipartisan".

My key is the word "reform". It's almost always used to label something that's
going to make things significantly worse.

~~~
unconed
Bipartisan just means whatever is in the middle of the window of acceptable
discourse, which then shrinks further into nothing, until they're no longer
debating what policy should be, but merely who should implement it.

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viking
There seems to be a good supply of legislators that are willing to take
donations for laws that benefits special interests at the expense of the many.

If this legislative problem persists I believe there are only three ways of
fighting back:

Entrepreneurship: inventions that speed up the demise of the companies funding
this and remove the dependency legislators have on special interests.

Legislation: increase cost of enforcement. Donate to legislators that increase
friction to these processes by adding requirements and process to:

    
    
          - the submitter of a request (e.g a copyright holder). 
          - the processor of a request (e.g the FBI)
          - the executor of a request (e.g the dns system)
    

Technology: make the laws unenforceable by:

    
    
          - making information untrackable (e.g making it X%      
            likely that trackable information is incorrect) 
          - changing the trust model of the internet (e.g replacement to dns).

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krakensden
> Elsewhere, the bill creates an equally sweeping immunity against law-
> breaking so long as the law-breaking provides information to a
> “cybersecurity exchange

There's a germ of something that could be useful in there. If you a) have
knowledge of a security issue and b) can't get the vendor to respond, the
options available aren't great. Being able to get men with badges to go bang
on doors before full disclosure could help users, and provide a certain amount
of satisfaction for security researchers. Maybe a commemorative helmet-cam dvd
could be included.

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maeon3
If we can't censor at the dns level because of protesting, maybe we can get
some tsa like government agencies to oversee internet security. Start it
simple and meaningless, give it a nice name like "sharing" and "information".
It will pass.

Then we'll slowly build its power and establish its rightful duty to preserve
the security of the internet, loyal to the Federal reserve and Congress. Thus
establishing ownership of the global net. Then we can tax the hell out of
every imported and exported byte we don't like.

Sigh... Its an improvement over sopa at least!

