9 ms·

CISPA 'dead' in Senate, privacy concerns cited

284 points by microwise 13y ago

tsotha 13y ago
"Undead" is more like. This thing will keep coming back under different names until it passes.
- TheCapn 13y ago
  As long as the people that wish to see it pass are around there's a group of people that don't want to see it pass fighting it. If we keep the public educated on the consequences of such bills we'll keep playing this game but hopefully gain a bit more support on each iteration. This is one of those scenarios, as I see it, where it is as easy as supporting the groups battling on the hill and educating/informing your friends when the topic comes up over a beer or such. My girlfriend asked me yesterday about what a "Kispah" was. Once I figured out what the hell she was talking about I simply gave her the quick overview of what it was introduced for and why it is against our best interests. She knows now and can make up her own decisions on support.
  - ryguytilidie 13y ago
    That is the thing though. The senators and interest groups who want this passed understand how to work around their opponents. I'd predict there will be some sort of major hacking scare and this bill will piggyback on that and pass while everyone is scared and willing to forego their rights.
    - jaibot 13y ago
      I will predict that this does not happen within the next 5 years, 85% confidence.
      - obviouslygreen 13y ago
        Questionable confidence ratings aside, what you're betting against is a very narrow example of the many things that could happen that would push this through. It died once and is back; it got farther this time, and whether it's because of a hacking scare, because even fewer people are paying attention, or for any of myriad other reasons, it will eventually go through.
        jaibot 13y ago
        It's the price I'd put on it if Intrade were still around.
    - tsotha 13y ago
      Yeah, they'll just chop it into pieces and attach them to "must pass" legislation. These guys know what they're doing.
  - prawks 13y ago
    Mind if I ask how you explained it to her (in what I'm guessing was a relatively short time)? It seems to me that most explanations of the bill are very biased one way or another, or don't mention enough detail to be worthwhile.
- jaibot 13y ago
  The US Legislative System is built for gridlock. Lots of things come up again and again over the decades, but passage remains unlikely - especially for an issue where the opposition is more engaged (see gun control).
- rektide 13y ago
  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.
  - rcthompson 13y ago
    The 3rd amendment doesn't exist anymore. It only applies in time of peace, and we are now in an eternal global war on terror.
    - mcintyre1994 13y ago
      We have always been at war with <enemy>. I kid, but I honestly wasn't aware of that, was the constitution written to exclude wartime or did somebody have to amend it because some condition was untenable during wartime?
      - EvanKelly 13y ago
        The third amendment has always stated "in time of peace". The specification is due to the fact that any foreseeable war was to be fought on US soil (War of 1812!) and we didn't have the infrastructure to deal with housing troops in the event of that war. I don't think SCOTUS has had to interpret "time of peace" in the 3rd Amendment in modern times.
  - awj 13y ago
    > The government is dead serious about turning every sizable company on the internet into a part of a gross-national cybersecurity infrastrucutre maintainer, Which government? The head of the executive branch that threatened to veto such a thing over privacy concerns, or the Senate that wouldn't even give the bill the time of day (again, due to privacy concerns). The government is a big damned huge complicated thing. Statements like "The government wants to do X" are silly simply due to the scale, even more so when two distinct pieces of "the government" are blocking the action you're asserting as their "dead serious" goal.
- tzs 13y ago
  Isn't that how it is supposed to work? There is pretty widespread agreement even among opponents of CISPA in its current form that the problems it is trying to address are real, serious, and need to be addressed, and I believe that there is even wide agreement that CISPA addresses them. The objections are that it needs some tweaking to prevent abuse (e.g., tighten up some definitions). Why should it not come back after those tweaks are made?
  - tomku 13y ago
    Some people oppose CISPA because of fixable issues regarding privacy or overly broad scope, some oppose it because they they think that it'll let the government spy on every URL they visit or allow the MPAA to take down all of Facebook for copyright infringement. According to the latter, CISPA isn't just a bad idea, it's pure malicious evil - the people supporting it need to be defeated so soundly that they never even try to bring it up again. Unfortunately, that latter group is quite well-represented here on HN.
    - SwellJoe 13y ago
      You make it sound as though those are the only two kind of people on this issue: Those who are reasonable and think CISPA can be fixed, and those who think CISPA is a bill to make spying on every American citizen the legal obligation of every ISP and internet company. You leave no room for the vast majority of us who believe that the US government already has more than enough authority to spy on people; the government can get a warrant for collecting all of the data they currently want access to. Pretending the government doesn't already have the tools needed to enforce the law is disingenuous. Pretending that this bill is a "reasonable" response to real problems is disingenuous. It isn't a debate between calm, rational, reasonable people who think the bill is fine (with maybe a tweak or two) on one side, and nutjobs who are paranoid and think like Gene Hackman in The Conversation on the other. There are reasonable people on both sides...but, I question the intentions (and possibly the integrity) of people, particularly people in the tech industry, who support the bill as it stands today. It shouldn't be surprising that so many people on HN are uncompromising on Internet freedom. It's something we know more than most about, and something we care more than most about.
- rhizome 13y ago
  That's why an online-rights law should be passed, so the offensive things that these bills try do are shut down as a matter of law.
- flyinRyan 13y ago
  It's neither. It's tabled until the Senate finishes their own CISPA like bill which will presumably be merged with CISPA before being passed.
jstalin 13y ago
Expect it to be introduced on a Friday night and quickly, quietly passed with no notice.
- mcintyre1994 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    Not usually. Usually the idea is to wait until all the publicity dies down and then quietly slip it through when nobody's looking.
arjn 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    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 13y ago
      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.
- Karunamon 13y ago
  Mm, I agree with this just on principle, but the problem is that not every law that needs to be passed will be popular. (The problem with having representatives just being direct, non-autonomous proxies of their constituents is that people will vote for things that benefit them and then not vote to pay for it..)
sehugg 13y ago
Anyone taking a look at the Senate bill S.2102? http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112s2102is/pdf/BILLS-112s2102is.pdf http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/BILLS-112s2102is/pdf/BILLS-112s...
- knowaveragejoe 13y ago
  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?
Apocryphon 13y ago
That deflated quickly.
stefanix 13y ago
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-or-why-sopa-is-a-bad-idea-clay-shirky-on-ted-com/ http://blog.ted.com/2012/01/18/defend-our-freedom-to-share-o... tl;dr "Time Warner called, they want you back on the couch!"
snowwrestler 13y ago
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 13y ago
  > 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 13y ago
    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.
    - bkor 13y ago
      > The only people who disagree with this statement are people who are simply not informed. Please try to be less obvious about your lack of arguments.
      - snowwrestler 13y ago
        Well prove me wrong with substance if it's so easy.
    - lutusp 13y ago
      > 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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum
bifrost 13y ago
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.
drivebyacct2 13y ago
Thank God we have the Senate to check back for a tiny bit of the House's lunacy.
trippy_biscuits 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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.
LatvjuAvs 13y ago
Instead of fighting CISPA's, OCTA's, DIRSA's, etc. Concerned people should pass workable law that would forbid these bills popping up like a mushrooms after rain. But we still love ol good witch hunt.
mpowered 13y ago
I will always be afraid of legislation that continues to use the term "cyber".

284 points by microwise 13y ago

tsotha 13y ago

"Undead" is more like. This thing will keep coming back under different names until it passes.

TheCapn 13y ago
As long as the people that wish to see it pass are around there's a group of people that don't want to see it pass fighting it. If we keep the public educated on the consequences of such bills we'll keep playing this game but hopefully gain a bit more support on each iteration. This is one of those scenarios, as I see it, where it is as easy as supporting the groups battling on the hill and educating/informing your friends when the topic comes up over a beer or such. My girlfriend asked me yesterday about what a "Kispah" was. Once I figured out what the hell she was talking about I simply gave her the quick overview of what it was introduced for and why it is against our best interests. She knows now and can make up her own decisions on support.
- ryguytilidie 13y ago
  That is the thing though. The senators and interest groups who want this passed understand how to work around their opponents. I'd predict there will be some sort of major hacking scare and this bill will piggyback on that and pass while everyone is scared and willing to forego their rights.
  - jaibot 13y ago
    I will predict that this does not happen within the next 5 years, 85% confidence.
    - obviouslygreen 13y ago
      Questionable confidence ratings aside, what you're betting against is a very narrow example of the many things that could happen that would push this through. It died once and is back; it got farther this time, and whether it's because of a hacking scare, because even fewer people are paying attention, or for any of myriad other reasons, it will eventually go through.
      - jaibot 13y ago
        It's the price I'd put on it if Intrade were still around.
  - tsotha 13y ago
    Yeah, they'll just chop it into pieces and attach them to "must pass" legislation. These guys know what they're doing.
- prawks 13y ago
  Mind if I ask how you explained it to her (in what I'm guessing was a relatively short time)? It seems to me that most explanations of the bill are very biased one way or another, or don't mention enough detail to be worthwhile.
jaibot 13y ago
The US Legislative System is built for gridlock. Lots of things come up again and again over the decades, but passage remains unlikely - especially for an issue where the opposition is more engaged (see gun control).
rektide 13y ago
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.
- rcthompson 13y ago
  The 3rd amendment doesn't exist anymore. It only applies in time of peace, and we are now in an eternal global war on terror.
  - mcintyre1994 13y ago
    We have always been at war with <enemy>. I kid, but I honestly wasn't aware of that, was the constitution written to exclude wartime or did somebody have to amend it because some condition was untenable during wartime?
    - EvanKelly 13y ago
      The third amendment has always stated "in time of peace". The specification is due to the fact that any foreseeable war was to be fought on US soil (War of 1812!) and we didn't have the infrastructure to deal with housing troops in the event of that war. I don't think SCOTUS has had to interpret "time of peace" in the 3rd Amendment in modern times.
- awj 13y ago
  > The government is dead serious about turning every sizable company on the internet into a part of a gross-national cybersecurity infrastrucutre maintainer, Which government? The head of the executive branch that threatened to veto such a thing over privacy concerns, or the Senate that wouldn't even give the bill the time of day (again, due to privacy concerns). The government is a big damned huge complicated thing. Statements like "The government wants to do X" are silly simply due to the scale, even more so when two distinct pieces of "the government" are blocking the action you're asserting as their "dead serious" goal.
tzs 13y ago
Isn't that how it is supposed to work? There is pretty widespread agreement even among opponents of CISPA in its current form that the problems it is trying to address are real, serious, and need to be addressed, and I believe that there is even wide agreement that CISPA addresses them. The objections are that it needs some tweaking to prevent abuse (e.g., tighten up some definitions). Why should it not come back after those tweaks are made?
- tomku 13y ago
  Some people oppose CISPA because of fixable issues regarding privacy or overly broad scope, some oppose it because they they think that it'll let the government spy on every URL they visit or allow the MPAA to take down all of Facebook for copyright infringement. According to the latter, CISPA isn't just a bad idea, it's pure malicious evil - the people supporting it need to be defeated so soundly that they never even try to bring it up again. Unfortunately, that latter group is quite well-represented here on HN.
  - SwellJoe 13y ago
    You make it sound as though those are the only two kind of people on this issue: Those who are reasonable and think CISPA can be fixed, and those who think CISPA is a bill to make spying on every American citizen the legal obligation of every ISP and internet company. You leave no room for the vast majority of us who believe that the US government already has more than enough authority to spy on people; the government can get a warrant for collecting all of the data they currently want access to. Pretending the government doesn't already have the tools needed to enforce the law is disingenuous. Pretending that this bill is a "reasonable" response to real problems is disingenuous. It isn't a debate between calm, rational, reasonable people who think the bill is fine (with maybe a tweak or two) on one side, and nutjobs who are paranoid and think like Gene Hackman in The Conversation on the other. There are reasonable people on both sides...but, I question the intentions (and possibly the integrity) of people, particularly people in the tech industry, who support the bill as it stands today. It shouldn't be surprising that so many people on HN are uncompromising on Internet freedom. It's something we know more than most about, and something we care more than most about.
rhizome 13y ago
That's why an online-rights law should be passed, so the offensive things that these bills try do are shut down as a matter of law.
flyinRyan 13y ago
It's neither. It's tabled until the Senate finishes their own CISPA like bill which will presumably be merged with CISPA before being passed.

jstalin 13y ago

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

mcintyre1994 13y ago
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 13y ago
  Not usually. Usually the idea is to wait until all the publicity dies down and then quietly slip it through when nobody's looking.

arjn 13y ago

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 13y ago
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 13y ago
  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 13y ago
    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.
Karunamon 13y ago
Mm, I agree with this just on principle, but the problem is that not every law that needs to be passed will be popular. (The problem with having representatives just being direct, non-autonomous proxies of their constituents is that people will vote for things that benefit them and then not vote to pay for it..)

sehugg 13y ago

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

knowaveragejoe 13y ago
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?

Apocryphon 13y ago

That deflated quickly.

stefanix 13y ago

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-or-why-sopa-is-a-bad-idea-clay-shirky-on-ted-com/ http://blog.ted.com/2012/01/18/defend-our-freedom-to-share-o... tl;dr "Time Warner called, they want you back on the couch!"

snowwrestler 13y ago

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 13y ago
> 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 13y ago
  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.
  - bkor 13y ago
    > The only people who disagree with this statement are people who are simply not informed. Please try to be less obvious about your lack of arguments.
    - snowwrestler 13y ago
      Well prove me wrong with substance if it's so easy.
  - lutusp 13y ago
    > 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 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum

bifrost 13y ago

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.

drivebyacct2 13y ago

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

trippy_biscuits 13y ago

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 13y ago
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.

LatvjuAvs 13y ago

Instead of fighting CISPA's, OCTA's, DIRSA's, etc. Concerned people should pass workable law that would forbid these bills popping up like a mushrooms after rain. But we still love ol good witch hunt.

mpowered 13y ago

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