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That's a common excuse used to defend bills that erode various constitutional rights. "Everything authorized by this bill was already lawful under other bills.
by hristov 15y ago
That's a common excuse used to defend bills that erode various constitutional rights. "Everything authorized by this bill was already lawful under other bills. Nothing to worry about, keep moving." This means that you can change things gradually with multiple bills and claim each time that "this bill changes nothing, keep moving".
If this bill changes nothing, then there is no purpose to vote for this bill is there?
- tptacek 15y agoI agree that there is no purpose for CISPA. It's a dumb bill.
- rayiner 15y agoThere's no Constitution rights at play here. Sorry, there just aren't. The Constitution protects your right to be secure in your personal effects. Information you hand over to third parties is not protected by the Constitution. It wasn't protected in 1789, it's not protected now.
- hristov 15y agoNot true. Personal papers that are, for example, stored in a hotel room enjoy fourth amendment protection (there are sometimes exceptions for people that do not pay, etc., but the main point stands). Why shouldn't you be able to establish a contractual trust relationship with a services provider that protects your privacy, so that you can enjoy third party services and cloud services while also enjoying fourth amendment protections? The law with regard to privacy in cloud services is not very well established, but if we allow laws like CISPA to pass, this will slowly but surely make it impossible for any service provider to ensure privacy, even if they wanted to. This will mean that we have to give up all the benefits of cloud services if we want privacy.
- tedunangst 15y agoIn between what the law bans and what the law permits, there's all the "you're allowed to do it because nobody said you can't" stuff. If you happen to be doing that stuff, it's comforting to have it explicitly called out as legal. If you want that stuff to be illegal, you obviously don't want it getting promoted to "more" legal, because it's harder to get your ban passed. Imagine a new bill is introduced. "Eating apples is legal." The Apple Pickers Union would love to see this bill passed. The Orange Pickers Union would probably oppose it. They'd both spend millions on a blogocampaign to convince you they are right. But passing (or not passing) the bill changes nothing; it's already legal to eat apples.
- AutoCorrect 15y agoif it's a refinement of an existing law, then remove the existing law, and put this one in. don't add layer upon inscrutable layer.
- Gormo 15y ago> If you happen to be doing that stuff, it's comforting to have it explicitly called out as legal. No it isn't; having the law explicitly call it out as legal shifts the perception of those activities from being ones that the law does not involve itself with at all to ones that are enabled and authorized by the law. In other words, it makes things subject to the law that were not previously subject to the law, and so ultimately makes those things easier to constrain/regulate in the future.
- tedunangst 15y ago"enabled and authorized by the law." I think if you're Facebook, that's exactly what you want. They would prefer to avoid lawsuits about sharing information, even if they would win those lawsuits anyway. I think Good Samaritan laws are an appropriate analogy. You don't want people worrying about liability instead of doing the right thing (right thing being highly subjective). "easier to constrain/regulate in the future." Ironically, that sounds like motivation for the EFF to support the bill.