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posted by takyon on Thursday July 30 2015, @11:20PM   Printer-friendly
from the talking-about-it dept.

The Hill reports:

[...] Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, or CISA, is an out and out surveillance bill masquerading as a cybersecurity bill. It won't stop hackers. Instead, it essentially legalizes all forms of government and corporate spying.

Here's how it works. Companies would be given new authority to monitor their users -- on their own systems as well as those of any other entity -- and then, in order to get immunity from virtually all existing surveillance laws, they would be encouraged to share vaguely defined "cyber threat indicators" with the government. This could be anything from email content, to passwords, IP addresses, or personal information associated with an account. The language of the bill is written to encourage companies to share liberally and include as many personal details as possible.

That information could then be used to further exploit a loophole in surveillance laws that gives the government legal authority for their holy grail -- "upstream" collection of domestic data directly from the cables and switches that make up the Internet.

[...] CISA would create a huge expansion of the "backdoor" search capabilities that the government uses to skirt the 4th Amendment and spy on Internet users without warrants and with virtually no oversight.

All of this information can be passed around the government and handed down to local law enforcement to be used in investigations that have nothing to do with cyber crime, without requiring them to ever pull a warrant. So CISA would give law enforcement a ton of new data with which to prosecute you for virtually any crime while simultaneously protecting the corporations that share the data from prosecution for any crimes possibly related to it.

Will CISA be used against the guilty, or the innocent?


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  • (Score: 4, Informative) by Kromagv0 on Friday July 31 2015, @01:55PM

    by Kromagv0 (1825) on Friday July 31 2015, @01:55PM (#216309) Homepage

    Sadly, but probably not under current interpretations of the 4th where a third party is involved (the three parties are you, the Feds, and some random business/doctor/person/whatever): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine [wikipedia.org]

    Which is one of the worst parts of USA FREEDOM act. All of the data that the NSA had been collecting illegally that the act specifically states is illegal is now to be kept by a 3rd party so now all that is needed is for the government to simply ask maybe with a stern letter and it will be handed over all completely legal. My 2 stupid senators (Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken) as well as my hawkish congressman (John Kline) all voted for it. Kline was even proud that he sponsored the bill but at least had the willingness to respond to my letter, Klobuchar and Franken won't even bother responding. Kline at least is open about his support and is probably a true believe that it will make everyone safer.

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  • (Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Friday July 31 2015, @06:28PM

    by hemocyanin (186) on Friday July 31 2015, @06:28PM (#216454) Journal

    ... so now all that is needed is for the government to simply ask maybe with a stern letter ...

    Exactly, and it doesn't even need to be stern. The whole point of the 3d Party Doctrine is to obviate the need for a warrant.

    • (Score: 2) by Kromagv0 on Monday August 03 2015, @11:50AM

      by Kromagv0 (1825) on Monday August 03 2015, @11:50AM (#217352) Homepage

      I did say maybe with a stern letter as some businesses have in the past said no, but I do fully expect most to just hand it over at the drop of a hat.

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