
CISPA 'dead' in Senate, privacy concerns cited - microwise
http://www.zdnet.com/cispa-dead-in-senate-privacy-concerns-cited-7000014536/
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tsotha
"Undead" is more like. This thing will keep coming back under different names
until it passes.

~~~
rektide
No joke- Obama threatened a veto on privacy concerns and the senate punted on
it- and yet:

The government is dead serious about turning every sizable company on the
internet into a part of a gross-national cybersecurity infrastrucutre
maintainer, and they are not going to quit until the internet has been
adequately leashed by the legislative hand.

If corporations are people, this is definitely a violation of the 3rd
amendment. Look it up, you probably haven't heard of it in the past couple
hundred years or so.

~~~
rayiner
Explain the third amendment bit: "No Soldier shall, in time of peace be
quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war,
but in a manner to be prescribed by law."

Who exactly is suggesting we house soldiers in peoples' houses?

~~~
crgt
If I understand the GP correctly, the claim is that we are now perpetually at
cyberwar and CISPA would invite cyberwarriors into everyone's home.

~~~
rayiner
How is that "quartering soldiers?" Or do words just mean whatever we want them
to mean?

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alan_cx
Well, if what you do virtually on line can be considered on a par with what
you do physically, so inciting terrorism on facebook for example, there has to
be some sort of parallel with virtual soldiers, which we could refer to as spy
service spybots, spying on out computers in our homes, or on our mobile
devices.

Im not sure the government can on one had work that logic to prosecute
citizens, while not applying the same logic to its own activities.

So, things have moved on and so "quartering soldiers" applied to today's
society should apply with the same logic used elsewhere. Especially if
elsewhere is the law.

Words don't mean what ever we want, but their meaning does change and evolve
over time to reflect current society.

~~~
rayiner
> Well, if what you do virtually on line can be considered on a par with what
> you do physically

But it isn't. That's why e.g. the CFAA is separate from plain old criminal
trespass.

> Words don't mean what ever we want, but their meaning does change and evolve
> over time to reflect current society.

Sure words evolve, but some words are more amenable to evolution than others.
"Quartering soldiers" is a very specific term, referencing a very specific
grievance that the colonists had with the British. It has nothing to do with
spying--the grievance was about being forced to "quarter" (literally, to
furnish with lodging) soldiers and bear the expense of doing so.

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arjn
There should be measures put in place preventing lawmakers from sneaking in
questionable (or any) legislation. It is a wanton subversion of democracy to
employ underhanded methods to pass unpopular laws.

~~~
rayiner
What exactly is "underhanded" about CISPA? They've got a coalation favoring it
that includes companies like Google and Facebook. It's _not_ an unpopular law,
except among a small demographic of civil libertarians (and not even really
among traditional civil libertarians, just the internet-focused ones). Average
people don't care.

An unpopular law would be something like cutting Social Security benefits.
That's something people would actually care about.

~~~
relic
arjn isn't saying CISPA itself is underhanded, just that the tactics employed
to push it through may be. He said CISPA was unpopular, and you can't argue
that.

~~~
rayiner
I argue with both of these points. What's underhanded about how it's being
passed? It's a bill being voted on like any other.

And CISPA is not unpopular, at least not generally. Most voters have no idea
what it is, nor would they care if you explained it to them. What you really
have is one small bloc: Google, Facebook, government security people, etc,
supporting CISPA, and one small bloc, the ACLU, EFF, etc, opposing it. If
CISPA gets passed, it's not some sneaky thing getting passed in an underhanded
way against the wishes of the majority of the people. It's one small bloc
winning out over another small bloc over an issue the majority of people don't
care about.

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trippy_biscuits
I've complied with a number of US federal requests made to a corporation that
sells internet access and hosting. The requests started out as federal
subpoenas detailing exact information to retrieve. Then they started to slide
to unofficial requests for "everything you have" on the target and finally
settled on, "please observe this account and search for anything we can use to
get a subpoena." That was 10 years ago. What exactly is the victory here?

~~~
3825
When you "observe this account and search for anything we can use to get a
subpoena", have you not made yourself an agent of the government? You are now
looking at client information on request of the government. I'd think that
triggers the "unreasonable search and seizure" and could (I hope) result in a
mistrial.

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sehugg
Anyone taking a look at the Senate bill S.2102?
[http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112s2102is/pdf/BILLS-112s...](http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112s2102is/pdf/BILLS-112s2102is.pdf)

~~~
knowaveragejoe
Is this the democrat sponsored version of the bill? From what I understand,
it's even worse from a privacy standpoint, but I haven't read it myself. Any
insight?

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jstalin
Expect it to be introduced on a Friday night and quickly, quietly passed with
no notice.

~~~
mcintyre1994
Why wouldn't they have just passed it now? I mean, it might be re-introduced,
but surely the idea is to deal with these concerns before doing so, or it'll
just be dropped again?

~~~
tsotha
Not usually. Usually the idea is to wait until all the publicity dies down and
then quietly slip it through when nobody's looking.

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stefanix
CISPA will come back under a different name. Here is some historic context:
[http://blog.ted.com/2012/01/18/defend-our-freedom-to-
share-o...](http://blog.ted.com/2012/01/18/defend-our-freedom-to-share-or-why-
sopa-is-a-bad-idea-clay-shirky-on-ted-com/)

tl;dr "Time Warner called, they want you back on the couch!"

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bifrost
I'm glad its dead (again) but it took a long time to kill the misnomer of "Net
Neutrality", and I suspect CISPA is going to take a lot longer to go away.

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mpowered
I will always be afraid of legislation that continues to use the term "cyber".

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Apocryphon
That deflated quickly.

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drivebyacct2
Thank God we have the Senate to check back for a tiny bit of the House's
lunacy.

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snowwrestler
For those not familiar with the legislative process in the U.S., the Senate
does not have to pass CISPA. They just need to pass some cybersecurity bill,
which can then be conferenced together with CISPA.

Some will take this as proof that the system is broken, but the truth is that
we really do need some improvements and clarifications of certain laws to help
companies improve their security. If the Senate passes a bill with better
privacy protections, those could survive a conference and get signed into law.

~~~
TruthElixirX
> but the truth is that we really do need some improvements and clarifications
> of certain laws to help companies improve their security.

Oh, well, since you put together such a persuasive argument.

~~~
snowwrestler
The only people who disagree with this statement are people who are simply not
informed.

What you see from groups like the ACLU, EFF, Demand Progress, etc. is
opposition to the specific language in CISPA, not opposition to the concept of
a cybersecurity bill in general. They did not oppose the Senate bill last year
for instance.

~~~
lutusp
> The only people who disagree with this statement are people who are simply
> not informed.

So I take it that you don't realize this is a logical error called _Argumentum
ad populum_?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum>

~~~
dragonwriter
Actually, that's not only a fairly weakly implied _argumentum ad populum_ , as
it doesn't actually argue that the number of ignorant people are small or the
number of non-ignorant people are large (though the use of "only" might imply
that.)

"The only people who disagree with this statement are people who are simply
not informed" is more directly _argumentum ad hominem_ , and, particularly,
abusive _ad hominem_.

<http://courses.csusm.edu/fallacies/abusive.htm>

Its also, simultaneously, _petitio principii_ since claiming that disagreement
with an argument can only be due to ignorance to support an argument is
equivalent to claiming that the argument is true to support the argument.

~~~
lutusp
I agree with your points, but I set out to mention just one logical error, and
_Argumentum ad populum_ seemed most apt as a single example.

The argument that only a minority of misinformed people hold a particular view
is a negative version of _Argument ad populum_. Apart from that, I agree with
your analysis.

