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PrECISE - It's the New SOPA/PIPA/ACTA

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Renegade:
You knew it wouldn't last. While you rejoiced when SOPA/PIPA were publicly hung for being draconian crimes against the people, you secretly also knew that dark forces were already planning their reincarnation.

That reincarnation now has a name: PrECISE Act


This time, rather than screaming about "piracy" to take away your privacy and rights, they're screaming about "security".

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.-Benjamin Franklin
--- End quote ---

None of this will make you more secure. It will do the opposite.

http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2012/02/is-the-us-senate-trying-to-sneak-in-a-new-sopa-bill/

Main article here:

http://dailycaller.com/2012/02/06/democrats-to-continue-internet-coup-with-new-cyber-bill/

A recent bill in the House  – the Promoting and Enhancing Cybersecurity and Information Sharing Effectiveness Act of 2011 or PrECISE Act — also empowers DHS in the event of a cyberattack, but the bill has been criticized by Reid as not giving the agency enough power.

...

Reid favors an approach that would expand DHS authority beyond currently regulated “critical infrastructure,” such as utilities and financial institutions, to also include Internet service providers and private networks.

--- End quote ---


Not enough power? Just how much power do these people want? The answer? Well, isn't it obvious? ALL the power.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, following a recent anti-piracy legislative debacle with SOPA and PIPA, will lead his second effort of 2012 to push Internet-regulating legislation, this time in the form of a new cybersecurity bill. The expected bill is the latest attempt by the Democrats to broadly expand the authority of executive branch agencies over the Internet.

Details about the bill remain shrouded in secrecy. Clues available to the public suggest that the bill might be stronger than President Barack Obama’s cybersecurity proposal, which was released in May 2011. Reid said that he would bring the bill — expected to come out of the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, chaired by Connecticut independent Sen. Joe Lieberman — to the floor during the first Senate work period of 2012.

A classified meeting behind closed doors in October 2011 between key Senate committee leaders with jurisdiction over cybersecurity and White House officials, took place at the request of the Obama administration. Lieberman, in an interview with The Hill in October, said that past Senate cybersecurity bills were considerably stronger than the White House proposal.

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Shrouded in secrecy? Kind of like how ACTA was? You mean trying to steal human rights in the middle of the night? Again?


We shouldn't have to worry about this kind of garbage. We should be spending our time in threads of interest like this one, rather than trying to spread awareness about tyrants trying to enslave us.


Update February 10:

Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee Majority Spokesperson Leslie Phillips told The Daily Caller Friday the bill does not regulate the Internet or information, and that any regulatory authority associated with the bill would be extremely narrow.

Phillips told TheDC that the purpose of this bill is to improve the security of critical infrastructure networks that control the energy or water supply, the financial sector or nuclear facilities – networks, which if attacked could cause mass death or catastrophic damage to the economy or national security. The bill also covers federal civilian networks. “We’re not talking about music files,” said Phillips. “We’re talking about life-sustaining services. This is not a regulatory bill. This is a national security bill.”

Phillips also told TheDC that the bill has not been shrouded in secrecy. “We have been circulating drafts of this bill for months.”


--- End quote ---

And we should all just go back to sleep and trust these people that NEVER lie about anything like the USS Maine, or the Gulf of Tonkin, or the "oral office", or not molesting children, or...  :-\

These people have a strong history of lying at every turn.

But we shouldn't give up or stop. Because the price of freedom is vigilance.


It is worth repeating...

Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.-Benjamin Franklin
--- End quote ---

IainB:
Well, this ARS Technica article seems like quite a good summary of how ACTA forms what looks rather like just a part of a decades-long subterfuge to wrap up "intellectual property" and copyright as an American asset: ACTA is part of a multi-decade, worldwide copyright campaign
(Go to the article, which contains embedded links, and the user comments are worth reading. The spoiler below contains just the text.)
SpoilerACTA is part of a multi-decade, worldwide copyright campaign
By Timothy B. Lee | Published February 20, 2012 10:30 AM

Last week, we observed that major content companies have enjoyed a steady drumbeat of victories in Congress and the courts over the last two decades. The lobbying and litigation campaigns that produced these results have a counterpart in the executive branch. At the urging of major copyright holders, the Obama administration has been working to export restrictive American copyright laws abroad. The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is just the most visible component of this ambitious and long-running project.

Ars Technica recently talked to Michael Geist, a legal scholar at the University of Ottawa, about this effort. He told us that rather than making their arguments at the World Intellectual Property Organization, where they would be subject to serious public scrutiny, the US and other supporters of more restrictive copyright law have increasingly focused on pushing their agenda in alternative venues, such as pending trade deals, where negotiations are secret and critics are excluded.

The growing opposition to ACTA in Europe suggests this strategy of secrecy may have backfired. But the US is not giving up. It has already begun work on its next secret agreement, ealled the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Geist told Ars that restoring balance to copyright law will require reformers to be as determined as their opponents have been. He said that donating to public interest groups that focus on international copyright issues is the best way to make sure that the public interest is well-represented.

Exporting copyright law

Countries have been negotiating international copyright treaties for more than a century, but the passage of two treaties in the 1990s represented a turning point in international copyright law.

The Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement, signed in 1994, made protection of copyrights a requirement of membership in the World Trade Organization. Countries that failed to meet international copyright standards could face trade sanctions. The 1996 World Intellectual Property Organization Copyright Treaty further ratcheted up the minimum requirements for copyright protection—requiring, for example, that signing countries regulate the circumvention of digital rights management schemes.

WIPO's relatively open structure meant that major copyright holders didn't get everything they wanted in the 1996 treaty. For example, Geist said, the United States was unable to get the strong anti-circumvention language it preferred into the WIPO treaty.

"WIPO is a place that's more open than it used to be," Geist told Ars. "Because of the consensus-based approach, there is a necessity to engage in negotiating." Indeed, in recent years reformers have begun to make headway themselves. Treaties to liberalize copyright in ways that benefit libraries and the blind are now under consideration at WIPO.

So, Geist said, the US has increasingly engaged in forum-shopping, bypassing WIPO and pushing for stronger copyright protection in a wide variety of other venues. For example, the United States has negotiated a series of bilateral trade agreements with nations such as South Korea, Australia, and Chile. While they're branded as free-trade deals, they also require the other country to adopt the more punitive copyright regime favored by the United States.

The negotiations over the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement were part of this trend. In contrast to the relatively open WIPO process, ACTA was negotiated in secret by a relatively small number of mostly wealthy countries. The developing nations who would be the most likely to object weren't invited to participate. The plan was to present the finished treaty to the world on a "take it or leave it" basis.

Unfortunately, the plan didn't work as well as its backers had hoped. Early drafts of the treaty leaked, giving opponents time to organize against the most extreme provisions in the treaty. And the secretive and non-representative nature of the negotiation process created a bad taste in the mouths of many stakeholders. Concerns over ACTA's secretive drafting process may have been as important as any of the treaty's substantive provisions in generating European opposition. If Europe fails to ratify ACTA, it will dramatically weaken the treaty.

Try, try again

But the US isn't giving up. To the contrary, the US and its industry backers seem to have concluded the problem with ACTA was that they didn't try hard enough to lock down the negotiating process. So they're now plowing forward with the Trans-Pacific Partnership. This time, the US has cut the leak-prone Europeans out of the process, limiting negotiations to eight countries such as New Zealand and Peru that are much easier for the United States to intimidate. Presumably, the goal is to enshrine the US's preferred copyright policies in the TPP and then use the TPP as a template for future agreements.

Once the US gets a critical mass of countries to sign a deal, it can then use other carrots and sticks to pressure additional countries to sign on. Geist said one important tool is the so-called "Special 301" list, an annual watchlist of countries Washington considers to have insufficiently strict copyright laws. Not only will countries be pressured to sign onto ACTA, the US may also press them to implement even those provisions of ACTA that the agreement itself labels as optional.

Geist believes that the interests behind SOPA and ACTA are likely to view recent defeats as temporary setbacks. "They're not playing for next year," he said. "They're playing for 10 years and 20 years in the future."

He said that reformers can resist their agenda, but only if they play the same "long game" as their opponents. Ordinarily, the most important thing a citizen of a democracy can do to stop bad public policies is to call their legislators. But in this case, most of the action is occurring in international organizations where individual legislators have little influence.

To fight agreements like ACTA requires organizations with the sophistication and resources to navigate the complex world of international diplomacy. Geist pointed to Knowledge Ecology International, Public Knowledge, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation as examples of organizations with a track record of resisting the drive toward ever-stronger copyright protection.These organizations are "WIPO regulars" well positioned to stay in the trenches and ensure the public interest is well-represented regardless of the venue. Geist said that donating to these organizations is the most effective way for ordinary voters to help resist the worldwide trend toward ever-more-extreme copyright laws.

--- End quote ---

This would seem to be the ideology of capitalism in a serious play for position over the long haul, and there's probably not a damned thing you can do about it.

Good quote from the article:
"The World Intellectual Property Organization is a relatively representative body. Which might be why the US has been avoiding it."

--- End quote ---

TaoPhoenix:
I'll make this worse with the PC-FIPA Act. Once again, Lamar Smith at the helm. You don't want to know what the title means. Which is the point of my diatribe. Just trust me it's evil. Crush it. HR-1981 United States Congress House.

antelopemeat:
Senator Orrin Hatch says the Government should blow up a few hundred thousands computers to help combat piracy on the Internet.
http://www.dethronehatch.com/orrin-hatch-is-no-friend-of-the-internet/

superboyac:
Senator Orrin Hatch says the Government should blow up a few hundred thousands computers to help combat piracy on the Internet.
http://www.dethronehatch.com/orrin-hatch-is-no-friend-of-the-internet/
-antelopemeat (February 21, 2012, 03:22 PM)
--- End quote ---
If this is serious, these guys have lost it.  Without even addressing how right/wrong it is, to me it just demonstrates someone who is totally out of touch, especially given the authority that he is trusted with: an authority that directly affects the lives of a hell of a lot of people.  Where are the intelligent people?  Where are they?  Where can I go to find them?  Are they all running away and hiding?

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