EFF and ACLU kicked off this Monday with Stop Cyber Spying Week, with a campaign to sway congress against the proposed CISPA bill, HR 3523, sponsored by Rep. Michael “Mike” Rogers of Michigan. The bill has 100 co-sponsors, and 6 additional in the last week, likely because of recent changes made to the bill. Several sources have reported that the definitions “Intellectual Property” have been removed. This is now an entirely other issue around security and privacy.
Audio Clip:
Copyright
©2012 Poobah Records, available under the terms of an Attribution license.
Source
April 20th, 2012 / The Tom Coston Show with Red Rosie / Poobah Records
Partial Transcript:
EFF and ACLU kicked off this Monday with Stop Cyber Spying Week, with a campaign to sway congress against the proposed CISPA bill, HR 3523, sponsored by Rep. Michael “Mike” Rogers of Michigan. The bill has 100 co-sponsors, and 6 additional in the last week, likely because of recent changes made to the bill. Several sources have reported that the definitions “Intellectual Property” have been removed. This is now an entirely other issue around security and privacy.
Many people have made statements against the bill this week, including Tim Berners-Lee, who made the first successful communication between HTTP client and server via the Internet. As well as a statement from White House spokeswoman Caitlin Kayden to not pass “cybersecurity” legislation without “robust safeguards to preserve the privacy and civil liberties of our citizens”. She did not mention CISPA specifically. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has published a list of organizations that have also made statements.
The bill still leaves many grey areas and defines protecting against release of private or confidential information, by legally allowing corporations and government to share information for “cyber security purposes” with “authorized people”. No this is not out of Orwells 1984 fiction.
This bill as an intentional attack on our privacy and liberties, and the government is being disobedient to it’s own people. Yay or nay, there is a will, and that is already too much. CISPA goes to the House floor for vote this Monday. Ultimately, we the people need to grow stronger regardless. Security will not come from any laws passed in Congress, it will start at the bottom and build up.
Still a significant portion of American citizens depend on Windows, Mac OSX, Facebook, Google and others because of ignorance of computing. This software is controlled by a dictatorship, and thus after twenty some years of rule, the lines between the corporations and the government are beginning to bleed into each other. This isn’t the first time either, back in the 70s-80s, AT&T went through a process of locking down Unix. This was one of the significant reasons that the free software movement started in 1983 by hackers who left MIT, such as Richard Stallman. We’ve become addicted to our gadgets that we’ve sacrificed our rights away, against our own liberty and freedom. These bills are coming from politicians responding to the behaviors of the people. It’s about time we start to rebel against not our government, but against the dictatorship of software.
If Congress is not willing to stand up for the people, than we need to stand up for ourselves and rise up. The tech companies supporting the bill are shooting themselves in the foot. It just might take the next twenty years to repair all the damage that has been caused by them. We need to build solidarity with the people and the State, restoring the relationships that have been divided an conquered. A massive campaign in computing education is needed, in our schools, on the streets, in libraries, far and wide people need to hear about computing liberty. Let’s declare our independence and sovereignty from the dictatorship of those controlling software unjustly.