15 ms·
Obama Signs CISA Bill into Law
- jug5 11y agoAmerica continues the slow spiral down the drain. Good luck folks.
- crb002 11y agoRand should filibuster everything until a CISA removal bill is passed.
- um_ya 11y agoIf only Rand was a robot that didn't need to eat, sleep, or piss. :/
- randomname2 11y agoHow this happened [1]: In a late-night session of Congress, House Speaker Paul Ryan announced a new version of the “omnibus” bill, a massive piece of legislation that deals with much of the federal government’s funding. It now includes a version of CISA as well. Lumping CISA in with the omnibus bill further reduces any chance for debate over its surveillance-friendly provisions, or a White House veto. And the latest version actually chips away even further at the remaining personal information protections that privacy advocates had fought for in the version of the bill that passed the Senate. Snowden's comment on this: Shameful: @Facebook secretly backing Senate's zombie #CISA surveillance bill while publicly pretending to oppose it. https://t.co/du7RK7V1WJ https://t.co/du7RK7V1WJ — Edward Snowden (@Snowden) October 25, 2015 [1] http://www.wired.com/2015/12/congress-slips-cisa-into-omnibus-bill-thats-sure-to-pass/ http://www.wired.com/2015/12/congress-slips-cisa-into-omnibu...
- mtgx 11y agoIf the USA Freedom Act was 1 step forward for privacy (also debatable if even that), this is 5 steps back. The US really needs to break away from its 2-party system, and the only way to do that is to kill the FPTP voting system. Otherwise, Americans will never have real choices for stuff that really matters.
- fixermark 11y agoI'm not convinced that even a flat popular vote wouldn't have supported CISA. Maybe this is just the generation of internet users who are willing to trade other people's freedom for their own security, given the chance?
- nakedrobot2 11y agoCan someone explain why/how the CISA portion of the bill can or can't be removed later?
- maaku 11y agoNot by any likely means.
- jessriedel 11y agoWhat are you asking exactly? In order to be attached to the bill, the amendment must be approved by a majority of the chamber. So that means it's already garnered support from congress, and congress is unlikely to take it off again before voting on the bill as a whole. Once it passes congress, the only way for it to be defeated would be for the president to veto the enormous budget bill based only on the amendment, which he is very unlikely to do (even if he did disapprove of CISA, which I don't think he does).
- natch 11y agoI think he means, while they approved the bill, warts and all, that doesn't mean everybody likes all the warts. (Although it is congress, so we have to assume they DO like warts... but let's put that aside). He's asking if they can come back and remove some of the warts, essentially, in a separate action at a later time.
- jessriedel 11y agoBut a majority of congress did like the wart. That's why the amendment adding the CISA text to the omnibus bill passed, and that's while it's very unlikely to be repealed later. (Of course it's possible to repeal it later, as is true for all laws; they didn't pass a constitutional amendment.) The public-choice situation as I understand it is that CISA was a bill that concentrated interests (large tech companies) liked but which the public as a whole did not like (insofar as they bothered to know about it). The key to passing such a bill is to minimize publicity and bundle it with a distraction.
- merpnderp 11y agoIt's useful to note that Paul Ryan gained his position by saying shady backroom deals like this, plus giving Congress almost no time to read and think about the bill themselves, were the exact things he promised to stop. So his very first act as speaker is to break every single promise he made to become speaker.
- SturgeonsLaw 11y agoI am Jack's complete lack of surprise
- owly 11y agoIndeed.
- twoodfin 11y agoIt's useful to note that Paul Ryan gained his position by saying shady backroom deals like this, plus giving Congress almost no time to read and think about the bill themselves, were the exact things he promised to stop. He did? I thought he got the job (after much cajoling) because he was the only candidate the moderate and right wings of the GOP could agree on.
- tptacek 11y agoYes. He had to be courted; the House Freedom Caucus had to make concessions for him to accept the job. The modal HN user has either a DailyKos or RedState (mostly Kos) understanding of US politics.
- robotkilla 11y agoI feel like I'm living in a twilight zone episode. I don't think we're ever going to see an end to this and I think its going to get worse and worse and no one is going to notice until there really is no way out. I'm sick of seeing comments about voting bad / good lawmakers out / in. Clearly that doesn't work because most citizens don't give a shit because they're too stupid to understand what is happening. Even when you educate them they're so shell shocked by the news that they're willing to let the powers that be shepherd them into servitude. We're all megafucked. Just wait until trump worms his way into office and uses this to round up whomever he hates at the moment. Imagine if bush had this level of power when he made the comments about atheists not being real citizens... i'm genuinely worried about the future.
- Aaronik 11y ago> Even when you educate them they're so shell shocked by the news that they're willing to let the powers that be shepherd them into servitude. We're all megafucked. The shell shocked attitude that's followed by complacency is exactly, "We're all megafucked," possibly in other words. It's exactly that attitude that we need to steer away from, no matter how grim the landscape looks. That's step 1 to change.
- robotkilla 11y agoif correcting one's attitude is step one, what is step two? voting? what real victories have been won on this front recently? and i'm not advocating for extremism nor am i advocating for complacency, the game just seems stacked with zero possibility of change.
- raintrees 11y agoI have recently gotten involved in local government and local community-supporting non-profits. The US as a world power and example of virtuousness seems to be on its way to the dustbin, so I am focusing on protecting/making healthy my community. If our local community can become strong enough, we may have a chance to survive to see what the next attempt at national/federal(/world?) government might look like. It's one of the few ways I can think of to do something positive and legal. And non-violent.
- MichaelGG 11y agoI'd love more reasons to hate Facebook, but is there any real sourcing for that? @Snowden seems to be linking to BoingBoing, who then links to Fight for the Future[1], which just claims secret sources. OK, but are they known to historically have had accurate secret info? Their landing page has this quote "If CISA passes, all your photos, posts, relationships, and likes will have a path to government databases." Which, from what very little I understand, is not quite true. At a minimum, "government databases" already have such a path via subpoenas, NSLs and such right? I want to believe FB is worse, yes. I'd just like a more convincing source to give people. 1: https://www.youbetrayedus.org/facebook/ https://www.youbetrayedus.org/facebook/
- propogandist 11y agoFB made it seem as if their CEO was donating his wealth to charity, even though his wealth was going to a private LLC. Most people believe Zuckerburg is a saint and just know the story propogated by the PR firms. People are not going to distrust a [free] service they use daily, they'll give FB benefit of the doubt, time and time again. It doesn't matter how good the source, today's users are addicts.
- DavidSJ 11y agoAll I can find from that Snowden tweet is https://www.youbetrayedus.org/facebook/ https://www.youbetrayedus.org/facebook/ . Are there any news articles explaining what the source of this claim is? That's a big deal if true.
- peter303 11y agoThe bill was online for two days before voting. I looked at sections of it. Any Congressman could have read in advance. It was very long and had lots of number amounts. Only an expert could tell if these were increases or decreases.
- caseysoftware 11y agoIncreases. There have been very few true "cuts" at the Federal level in the last few generations. The secret is Baseline Budgeting[1]. If your agency got $100 this year, you ask for $110 next year and that becomes the "baseline." Now when the actual budget negotiations happen, you may only get $105. Most people would call this a 5% increase but instead they consider it a (roughly) 5% cut from the baseline. This is how the government can claim they're "cutting the budget" while still spending more than last year. For a bonus, imagine the above agency is sympathetic - like the food stamp program - and requests $200 next year. When some Congressperson says "No wait, you only need $110," they're accused of "cutting food stamps in half" and "wanting people to starve!" It's effective for tearing apart the other person, not effective for actually getting things done. 1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseline_(budgeting) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baseline_(budgeting)
- rgbrenner 11y agoyou make it sound like the numbers are out of thin air.. but your link says: Baseline budgeting uses current spending levels as the "baseline" for establishing future funding requirements and assumes future budgets will equal the current budget times the inflation rate times the population growth rate. Sounds reasonable to me.
- caseysoftware 11y agoThat's the idealized definition, yes. But in practice, that's not how it works. There are one-time projects, ongoing programs, an ever-changing list of agency priorities, and - like any negotiation - groups start higher than they need so they have wiggle room. And yes, many of those things are out of thin air or completely arbitrary.
- mixedmath 11y agoThere have been very many versions of laws similar to CISA that have been proposed, modified, and changed/passed/failed/delayed. When I try to understand exactly what this CISA version includes, most rhetoric I read is alarmist and not conducive to actually knowing what can and cannot be done under CISA. Is there a digestible explanation of what this CISA entails?
- zanny 11y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybersecurity_Information_Sharing_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cybersecurity_Information_Shar... The core problem is it lets major industry players like MS / Google / Apple give the fed access to all the personal info they record without investigators needing a warrant and with no liability on the companies part (ie, you cannot sue them for state disclosure of your personal info that then resulted in harm against you). It basically means do not be surprised when you are charged with crimes for "private" communications over facetime, hangouts, skype, or with email over hotmail / yahoo / gmail. If you want slightly more editorialized takes on the terms, while the EFF and ACLU are obviously opinionated in this, I've never heard of them lying: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/06/zombie-bill-comes-back-look-senates-cybersecurity-information-sharing-act-2014 https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2014/06/zombie-bill-comes-back... https://www.aclu.org/blog/beware-dangers-congress-latest-cybersecurity-bill?redirect=blog/national-security-technology-and-liberty/beware-dangers-congress-latest-cybersecurity-bill https://www.aclu.org/blog/beware-dangers-congress-latest-cyb...
- pinkrooftop 11y agoSearch without a warrant though sounds unconstitutional. Legislative arbitrage. Passed low key in Congress, Removed at high cost in the courts
- egwynn 11y agoI believe CISA is more about what the feds MUST do and what private companies MAY do. It’s incentivising the private companies to rat you out, not requiring that they do so.
- x1024 11y agoWell, this whole Internet thing was nice while it lasted.
- rubyfan 11y agoWhat's the alternative?
- x1024 11y agoRead a book, I guess.
- jaxb 11y agoDo you have the right to read it?
- simonvc 11y agoEnd-to-End encryption... Which the UK govt is trying to ban.
- robotkilla 11y agoNot sure why you single out the UK - fbi recently gave an anti-e2e speech.
- kaybe 11y agoCan we make another one?
- joeyspn 11y agoIPFS? https://ipfs.io/ https://ipfs.io/
- awqrre 11y agoNot sure if something like this exist but what if you could use a system where people could subscribe to you (a bit like RSS) and get all your content (a bit like newsgroups, so that a third party would have a harder time to figure out at least some of the metadata) but the recipients could only decrypt what is addressed to them personally or to a group that they are part of...
- rplst8 11y agoThe article doesn't mention CISA. If it did, they changed it.
- sschueller 11y agoHow does CISA apply to US companies with subsidiaries in Europe like Microsoft? Will Microsoft now be required to hand over data located in datacenters abroad?
- Vivtek 11y agoNot if they want to comply with existing European privacy law, which the European courts have no problem at all interpreting in maximally draconian form - up to and including forbidding access to the European market. Even if the US government would attempt to force companies to do this, they wouldn't. And as far as I can tell, this bill doesn't force companies to comply, it just holds them harmless should they choose to comply.
- wolfwyrd 11y agoSadly not. The US courts have already ruled that data held in other data centres are fair game for a US warrant [1]. In this case the data is held in the EU (in Dublin, Ireland to be precise) and MS was found in contempt of court for failing to hand the data over [2]. They're still fighting this case now - over a year later - and it's currently in the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals [3]. This means that the precedent is already set. If the company operates in the US and is served a warrant, the US Govt wants ALL of the data WHEREVER it's held. I'm rooting for MS on this one and hope their appeal is upheld. [1] http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/29/us-court-microsoft-personal-data-emails-irish-server http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/apr/29/us-court-m... [2] http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-refuses-to-hand-over-foreign-data-held-in-contempt-of-court/ http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-refuses-to-hand-over-... [3] http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/e-regulation/microsoft-resist-email-handover-176516 http://www.techweekeurope.co.uk/e-regulation/microsoft-resis...
- ck2 11y agoBy the way, I haven't heard CNN or NBC mention CISA once this week. So apparently corporate media has no problem with CISA for some reason. Since congress rarely write their own laws and let the industry write it for them - who actually wrote CISA ? There's no way congress would know what to ask for. Did the NSA write CISA?
- merpnderp 11y agoLobbyist don't do "back room deals" for the fun of it. They do it so that there's no accountability. Democracy should have no secrets, and this is a disgrace.
- MicroBerto 11y agoWhat makes you think this is a democracy?
- laotzu 11y agoState run public education and mass media
- ionised 11y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
- mindslight 11y agoWhat makes you think this isn't?
- MicroBerto 11y agoThe fact that it's not
- mindslight 11y ago
- egwynn 11y agoI believe that CISA is mostly about changes within the government itself about sharing data between agencies. It seems to interface with the non-government world insofar as it lets companies share their data with government agencies without getting sued. I do NOT believe it contains any further provisions requiring private companies to share their data without a warrant. Can someone tell me if I’m reading it correctly? Not saying I like it, but if it’s not specifically requiring cooperation, then I guess there’s still some hope left.
- jessriedel 11y ago> I do NOT believe it contains any further provisions requiring private companies to share their data without a warrant. Sure, but that means the companies now face minimal incentive to protect user data but doubtless will experience pressure from the government to give it up even without a warrant.
- tptacek 11y agoThis bill only allows companies to share data that fit the definition of "cybersecurity threat indicator", and that definition requires companies to not knowingly share personally identifying information. It is not a particularly effective vector for slurping messages out of Facebook.
- jessriedel 11y agoDoes that roughly mean that FB must (to be shielded from lawsuits) anonymize the data before passing it to the government? This isn't particularly comforting, since it could still be used to prosecute individuals if identity can be inferred from other context. The EFF's criticism is basically that the bill is overly broad and can be used nefariously, even if it's not an all purpose FB message vacuum: > The bill's broad immunity clauses, vague definitions, and aggressive spying powers combine to make the bill a surveillance bill in disguise. Further, the bill does not address problems from the recent highly publicized computer data breaches that were caused by unencrypted files, poor computer architecture, un-updated servers, and employees (or contractors) clicking malware links. https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/10/eff-strongly-oppose-cisa-cyber-surveillance-bill-and-cfaa-amendment https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/10/eff-strongly-oppose-ci... That seems consistent with my aforementioned worry.
- imaginenore 11y agoWell, more encryption should be our response. It will backfire in ways they didn't even consider.
- atomicbeanie 11y agoSince they're enjoying Star Wars while legislating, maybe Padme's quote is apropos: "So this is how liberty dies. With thunderous applause."
- PlzSnow 11y agoCringe
- tptacek 11y agoCISA passed the Senate with almost 3:1 bipartisan support in October. PCNA, the House's (worse) version of CISA, passed with similar margins in April. Obama has publicly supported the bill all year. As much as HN and Twitter wants to believe CISA was enacted in some shady backroom deal, the process that actually occurred, including publicly available amendments and months-long review, is pretty close to "Schoolhouse Rocks". The debate on CISA was over. Thankfully. The only debate left was how close CISA would come to PCNA, with its broader law enforcement ties and vaguer language (EFF claims PCNA would have in some cases authorized large private companies to "hack back" computers they believed had been trying to hack them). Instead, Senate's CISA is the law of land almost verbatim to what they passed --- in a drawn out, public process --- in October. Later: Someone downthread asked for a summary of the bill. I did my best to strip the legalese out of it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10763827 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10763827
- randomname2 11y agoThe 14 votes against, FWIW: Baldwin (D-WI) Booker (D-NJ) Brown (D-OH) Coons (D-DE) Franken (D-MN) Leahy (D-VT) Markey (D-MA) Menendez (D-NJ) Merkley (D-OR) Paul (R-KY) Sanders (I-VT) Udall (D-NM) Warren (D-MA) Wyden (D-OR) https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151022/10133932597/cisa-moves-forward-these-83-senators-just-voted-to-expand-surveillance.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151022/10133932597/cisa-...
- robotkilla 11y agoI'm honestly starting to think sander's is our last hope -- I was on the fence until seeing this. Meanwhile he is getting undermined by the media.
- Donzo 11y agoNot so on social media, however, which makes this election really interesting: we'll be able to see to what extent the old guard (broadcast news networks) reigns supreme.
- clientbiller 11y agoAnyone know how to find out who wrote the bill?
- tosseraccount 11y agoThe debt to GDP ratio keeps rising: http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/government-debt-to-gdp http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/government-deb... The day of reckoning is coming.
- laotzu 11y agoMoney is debt by design, and GDP and money creation are positively correlated on purpose. I'm not sure what you're trying to point out here.
- jordanpg 11y agoA semi-serious proposal: why don't we just stop caring about this? By "we", I mean those of us with the technological know-how to protect our own privacy if desired. I bring this up because laws like CISA are meant to deal with large-scale collection of data for ostensibly well-meaning reasons from the vast majority of internet users. Those vast majorities that aren't lurking on HN, who don't know or care about the technical details of privacy beyond maybe vaguely wanting it, who want the internet to work, fast, free, and easily. It seems to me that with the vast law enforcement and intelligence agencies on the one side and the even larger internet economy on the other, there is no serious getting in the way of whatever flow of information those two groups agree on. It doesn't matter what you, me, the EFF, or Edward Snowden think. There is far too much money at stake. And the "privacy" threat, as we discuss it here, is irrelevant to just about everyone. Beyond implementing strong crypto with trusted software, for those who care to, I don't see that there is anything to be done here. As Schneier pointed out a few years ago, this ship sailed a long time ago: https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/03/our_internet_su.html https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/03/our_internet_...
- transfire 11y agoMy favorite clause... "(e) Prohibited conduct -- Nothing in this title shall be construed to permit price-fixing, allocating a market between competitors, monopolizing or attempting to monopolize a market, boycotting, or exchanges of price or cost information, customer lists, or information regarding future competitive planning." Does this imply it could have been construed that way without this clause?
- transfire 11y agoI think the "big deal" about CISA is that it essentially gives the heads of state the ability to say "cybersecurity threat indicator" and by so doing collect any information or spy on any system they wish without warrant or any other form of informed oversight.
- rmac 11y agoSo is there room to build products to help facilitate the sharing of data as mandated in CISA? Is there a standard or format for how the government will expect this threat data to be packaged? STIX / TAXII? Startups; assemble!
- soared 11y agoThe most hated startup up in the world: "We disrupted the internet's privacy"
- joshmn 11y agoAl Franken (D-MN) voted against the original bill; he voted to pass the bill that was signed into law here. He has a long history of fighting for privacy and the internet. Having said, if he thinks this is OK, I probably don't need to read it. (though, I did) Original: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151022/10133932597/cisa-moves-forward-these-83-senators-just-voted-to-expand-surveillance.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151022/10133932597/cisa-... Votes against the bill that was signed into law: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/114-2015/s339 https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/114-2015/s339
- rayalez 11y agoI don't get it, can somebody explain this to me, why does this stuff happen in democracy? How can public fight government for years and lose? How is it possible to pass a law in US that is clearly against everyone's will? I mean for all I know, most of the people are strongly against it, except for a few polititians, nobody wants this to happen, so how is that even a discussion?
- robotkilla 11y ago> why does this stuff happen in democracy because democracy only works when people actually care. most us citizens are more concerned about the superbowl than government. > How is it possible to pass a law in US that is clearly against everyone's will? Who is everyone? Again - most people don't give a shit.