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Last post Author Topic: Internet freedoms restrained - SOPA/PIPA/OPEN/ACTA/CETA/PrECISE-related updates  (Read 214254 times)

Tinman57

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demandprogress.org have sent out an email from Aaron Swartz's father to their subscribers, asking for supporters to email a letter of thanks to senators Patrick Leahy, John Cornyn, and Al Franken, who apparently all pushed for answers when the US Justice Department appeared before the Judiciary Committee to discuss Aaron's case.
Supporters can send an email using a template at the demandprogress.org website.

  I just finished forwarding that email from DemandProgress to some people.  A very worthy cause, perhaps we can get to the middle of this and get the people responsible.....

IainB

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The FFII ACTA blog has an interesting piece:
EU Court allows more access to documents for companies than for citizens
June 7, 2013
By Ante
Corporate Europe Observatory writes (CEO):
    “Court ruling fails to stop business lobbies’ privileged access in EU-India trade talks

    In a ruling delivered today following a lawsuit by lobby watchdog Corporate Europe Observatory, the EU’s General Court in Luxembourg concludes that the European Commission did not violate EU rules when withholding information about the EU-India free trade talks from the public, even though it had already shared the information with corporate lobby groups. Corporate Europe Observatory warns that this decision risks deepening the secrecy around EU trade negotiations and legitimises the Commission’s practice of granting corporate lobby groups privileged access to its policy-making, at the expense of the wider public interest.”
Read the rest at the link.

IainB

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NSA surveillance - Edward Snowden's Motivation: Internet Freedom
« Reply #302 on: June 10, 2013, 06:34 PM »
   The somewhat shocking revelations initially published by the Guardian UK, regarding the US NSA's (National Security Agency) mass surveillance of electronic telecommunications and Internet communications, leaked by whistleblower Edward Snowden, have probably been a good wake-up call. Terms such as "PRISM" and "Boundless Informant" will arguably have taken on a whole new meaning in the IT lexicon, now.
   The wake-up itself is timely, insofar as it shows us that whilst we may have been putting our efforts into assiduously lobbying/working to protect the Internet freedoms from erosion by frontal so-called "legal" attacks (SOPA, PIP, etc.) - driven apparently by political and commercial lobbies - there has been an infinitely greater, total and hugely successful attack on Internet freedoms and other telecommunications freedoms. The attack is now a fait accompi, and has been progressively expanding for years (since 2006, at least) and has come from within, driven by the US government, under the catch-all justification of TWAT ("The War Against Terror"), or something.

This arguably rather makes a joke of our imagining that our/any efforts (above) to protect Internet freedoms from attack/restraint would be of any use. You can't protect something that has cynically already been destroyed without your realising it.
I had assumed that Edward Snowden's motivation for blowing the whistle might have been something to do with personal privacy and security, and the erosion of the the Fourth Amendment (Amendment IV) to the United States Constitution, represented by the invasive surveillance. Per Wikipedia, this the part of the Bill of Rights which guards against unreasonable searches and seizures, along with requiring any warrant to be judicially sanctioned and supported by probable cause.
   However, according to this Mashable article, it would seem that Edward Snowden's motivation was a little more specific than that:
(Copied below sans embedded hyperlinks/images, and with my emphasis.)
Edward Snowden's Motivation: Internet Freedom
By Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai2013-06-10 21:47:02 UTC

"Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather."

Those are the words that open the Declaration of Independence of Cyberspace, a seminal paper by John Perry Barlow. In the paper, the former Grateful Dead lyricist and founder of the online rights advocacy group Electronic Frontier Foundation argued governments should never meddle with cyberspace, a separate place where the real-world rules had no reason to exist.

SEE ALSO: PRISM: Does the NSA Really Get Direct Access to Your Data?

Barlow's declaration — the product of a time when Internet thinkers were perhaps a bit naive — might seem outdated now. Much has changed since then. Governments have indeed claimed sovereignty over the Internet, and nobody reasonably expects the Internet to be left alone anymore.

However, the Utopian ideals that shaped that declaration influenced an entire generation of kids who grew up messing around with a Windows 95 computer and a noisy 56k connection. Those ideals still resonate today.

And they're partly what pushed Edward Snowden to become a whistleblower by leaking a series of top-secret documents to The Guardian and The Washington Post. His leaks have revealed a secret court order that allows the NSA to collect the metadata of Americans' phone calls for months at a time; a secret system codenamed PRISM that intercepts Internet communications; a presidential directive asking for a list of targets for cyberattacks; and "Boundless Informant," a NSA tool to data-mine the world.

One of Snowden's reasons to leak those documents, according to his interview with The Guardian, was a belief that Internet privacy and freedom foster progress.

"I don't see myself as a hero," he said, "because what I'm doing is self-interested: I don't want to live in a world where there's no privacy and therefore no room for intellectual exploration and creativity."
Snowden considers the Internet "the most important invention in all of human history." He thinks the NSA and the U.S. government are curtailing Internet freedom in the name of national security and the fight against terrorism. His views have deep roots: As a teenager, he spent hours and hours on the Internet, "speaking to people with all sorts of views that I would never have encountered on my own."

We can agree or disagree with Snowden's actions and argue for hours and days about whether he is a hero, the most important whistleblower in America's history or a villain. He did what he did at least partly because he wanted the Internet to remain free, and he thought the people of the Internet deserved to know more about the NSA surveillance programs.

Image via The Guardian via Getty Images
Topics: bradley manning, edward snowden, Internet freedom, U.S., US & World, WikiLeaks, World

The emboldened bits speak for me.
Snowden is one American who apparently has a massive amount of spine.

superboyac

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Most Americans back NSA tracking phone records, prioritize probes over privacy
 ;D What?!  I call BS on this one.  Most Americans??  Really??  Nice try, media.

Idiots.  The title should read "Most americans will give the finger to anyone invading their privacy."

Tinman57

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Parsing PRISM denials: Could everyone be telling the truth?

06.07.2013 3:50 PM

A number of theories are still available to make all the carefully worded
statements and shifting facts sing harmoniously together today.

UPDATE, Saturday June 8, 2pm Pacific time: Since this report was originally
published Friday afternoon, new developments have added texture to the PRISM
saga. We have updated the story below with links to relevant material.
Bottom line: The world still doesn't know exactly how PRISM works, if the
technology companies implicated in the program are issuing earnest denials,
or if media outlets originally misinterpreted NSA documents. But piece by
piece, relevant information is falling into place.

http://www.pcworld.c...ling-the-truth-.html



Prism leaker steps forward, cites 'massive surveillance machine'

06.09.2013 1:05 PM

The person responsible for disclosing details on the growth of U.S.
government surveillance programs that exploded into public view last week
has identified himself as 29-year-old Edward Snowden, a technology
contractor working at the U.S. National Security Agency.

http://www.pcworld.c...a-whistleblower.html


Tinman57

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  Aaron's Law sounds like some good legislation, if it gets passed....

The Internet and all those who care about Aaron Swartz took a big step forward today

Rep. Zoe Lofgren and Sen. Ron Wyden just introduced "Aaron's Law", which would fix some of the worst parts of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), including those which make it a potential crime to violate terms of service agreements -- that fine print that nobody reads at the bottom of a website.

The CFAA is the law under which Aaron and other innovators and activists have been threatened with decades in prison. It is so broad that law enforcement says it criminalizes all sorts of mundane Internet use: Potentially even breaking a website's fine print terms of service agreement. Don't set up a MySpace page for your cat. Don't fudge your height on a dating site. Don't share your Facebook password with anybody: You could be committing a federal crime.

It's up to us to keep the Internet open, a place for sharing ideas, exploration and activism -- not for stifling creativity and criminalizing innovators.

As the bill's sponsors put it in a Wired.com Op-ed, "The events of the last couple of years have demonstrated that the public can speak loudly thanks to the Internet. And when it does, lawmakers will listen."

Let's make sure they hear us. Join us in calling on Congress to pass "Aaron's Law."

http://act.demandpro...ign/aarons_law_intro

IainB

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I have put this here for information as something in the wider context of total communications freedom and privacy, rather than just the Internet per se.
Depressing that the evidence we now have apparently shows that reality aligns very well with what we had often presumed or suspected to be the reality, and which reality would be an understatement to call a less-than-ideal norm.    >:(
Told You So: If You Have Been Using A Centralized Comms Service, You Were Wiretapped[
Saturday, June 29, 2013
tags: Headlines, Privacy
Rick Falkvinge

Privacy:
This night, news broke that the USA’s security agencies have been wiretapping essentially every major centralized social service for private data. Photos, video conferences, text chats, and voice calls – everything. We have been saying this for years and been declared tinfoil hat and conspiracy nuts; it’s good to finally see the documents in black on white.

This night, European time,  the  news  broke  that the USA’s National Security Agency (NSA) has had direct access to pretty much every social network for the past several years, dating back to 2007, under a program named PRISM. Under the program, a number of social services voluntarily feed people’s private data to the NSA. In short, if you have been using/uploading
  • e-mail
  • video or voice chat
  • videos
  • photos
  • stored data
  • VoIP calls
  • file transfers
  • video conferencing
  • (and more)

…from any of…

  • Microsoft (incl. Hotmail et al), since Sep 11, 2007
  • Google, since Jan 14, 2009
  • Yahoo, since Mar 12, 2008
  • Facebook, since June 3, 2009
  • PalTalk, since Dec 7, 2009
  • YouTube, since Sep 24, 2010
  • Skype, since Feb 6, 2011
  • AOL, since Mar 31, 2011
  • Apple, since Oct 2012

…then you have been wiretapped, and still are.

This piece of news broke just after it was revealed that the same NSA is demanding phone records from one of the major telco operators in the USA, and presumably all of them.

In short, practically every single service you have ever been using that has operated under the “trust us” principle has fed your private data directly to STASI-equivalent security agencies. Practically every single one. The one exception notably missing from the list is Twitter (but Twitter uses broadcast messages – you shouldn’t write anything secret on Twitter in the first place).

Carefully note that this PRISM program is not unique to the USA: Several European nations have the same wiretapping in place, Sweden among them. Also, these agencies share raw data freely between them, trivially circumventing any restrictions against wiretapping the own population (“I’ll wiretap yours if you’ll wiretap mine”).

This piece of news practically detonated when it hit this night. We have been saying that this is the probable state of things for years – it’s good to finally get rid of those tinfoil hats, with facts on the table. Predictably, the social comms companies named in the NSA slides are out scrambling with statements and comments.

Google, for example, said in a statement to the Guardian: “Google cares deeply about the security of our users’ data. We disclose user data to government in accordance with the law, and we review all such requests carefully. From time to time, people allege that we have created a government ‘back door’ into our systems, but Google does not have a back door for the government to access private user data.”

As a politician, what strikes me is how carefully crafted this statement is to give the appearance of denying the allegations, without doing so. It stops exactly short of saying “the presented allegations are lies”.

[UPDATE: The follow-up response from Google's CEO changes this picture completely. See the followup article. You've still been wiretapped if you've been using a centralized communications service, but through no fault of Google.]

For example, a system could be in place that continuously fed the NSA data from Google servers in accordance with the NSA documents, and the above Google statement would still be true (if Google feeds data to the NSA, rather than the NSA fetching it from Google).

Microsoft – whose motto is “Privacy is our priority”, the Guardian notes – was the first to join the PRISM program in 2007. On the other hand, that company was never trusted much, so I don’t see a lot of surprise.

What we learn from this is something that us net liberty activists have known and practiced all along: if you want your data to be private, you can trust no one with it. No one. You must make sure to encrypt it yourself. Only then can you place it in the custody of somebody else. Putting an unencrypted file on Dropbox, Google Drive, sending it in e-mail, etc., is and has been the equivalent of shouting it out to the entire world.

A system that requires privacy, but is built on the assumption on trust in a third party, is broken by design.

You can only trust systems that are built around the principle of distrusting the entire world (like bitcoin, nota bene), or systems that are physically under your control. Note that I say physically: having virtual servers “in the cloud” is not enough, for an administrator of that cloud can trivially go in and take everything you’re processing there and feed it to whomever they like, and must be assumed to do so. For the same reason, having your own servers in a rented datacenter is not enough, either: an administrator of the datacenter can give access to your computers to whomever they like. That is the reason why I have servers for this site and other sites of mine running on my own balcony:
The servers for this journalistic site, and other sites with more sensitive personal information.

The servers for this journalistic site, and other sites with more sensitive personal information, are under my physical control.

This is the reason you cannot trust Dropbox and similar services with anything remotely sensitive. If you have sensitive data, you need your own servers to store and communicate it. Servers that are physically under your control. That is why you should be running encrypted SparkleShare on your own file servers rather than Dropbox in the cloud; that is why you should be running default-encrypted Mumble on your own servers rather than using Skype; that is why you should be using RedPhone from your cellphone instead of regular voice calls.

It’s already a matter of life and death in many places on the planet. Also, do note that it may not be the laws today you have to worry about: Everything is recorded and stored, and your innocent words today may come back to haunt you 30 years down the line under a different administration.

Privacy is your responsibility. You can trust no one.

As a final note, this shows very much why pirate parties are needed – worldwide – to kick politicians who authorize these egregious violations out of office, off the coast and into the ocean. (I usually write “next state”, but people from that state always complain how people there don’t want them either.)

Tinman57

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  There are times that I wish I could gather up all the people that told me I needed to take off my tin-foil hat and say "TOLD YOU SO!!!

  But then I wish that they were right.....  :(

IainB

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In an email from demandprogress.org today:
...The Obama administration just revived one of the worst provisions in SOPA (the Stop Online Piracy Act).

The Commerce Dept's Internet Policy Task Force has proposed making it a felony to stream copyrighted content (aka Section 201 of SOPA). Interpreted broadly, this proposal would apply to anyone who puts copyrighted music in the background of their YouTube video or uploads a video of themselves covering a song without permission -- which means, under these rules, Justin Bieber would be a felon.

Even sharing a video of your friend's embarassing karoake performance or your family singing "Happy Birthday To You" could put you in jail! Click here to fight back.

This is all because the federal government wants to make streaming -- including material which falls under the "public performance" category -- punishable by years in prison.

Jail time for streaming videos? Tell the Obama administration: NO!

Obama apparently hasn't been paying attention the past two years: The American people don't want SOPA-style internet censorship or to open the door for more prosecutorial abuse. Period.

We've stopped them before -- from SOPA to PIPA to CISPA -- and we can stop them again.

Tell Obama: we still won't stand for SOPA-style censorship. ...
________________________

Whatever the country or governing political party, this form of protectionism would rather seem to indicate the actions of a puppet government, to me.
« Last Edit: August 21, 2013, 03:22 AM by IainB »

Stoic Joker

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Whatever the country or governing political party, this form of protectionism would rather seem to indicate the actions of a puppet government, to me.

+1 - Me too. I just wonder when/if our corporate masters will decide to come out of the shadows.

TaoPhoenix

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Imagine this in the style of a bait car episode!

8)

Renegade

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You think you've private lives
Think nothing of the kind.
There is no true escape
I'm watching all the time.
-Judas Priest - Electric Eye

Whatever the country or governing political party, this form of protectionism would rather seem to indicate the actions of a puppet government, to me.

+1 - Me too. I just wonder when/if our corporate masters will decide to come out of the shadows.

+1 & +1

Supreme court justice Clarence Thomas... hmmm... nothing fishy there...

The heads at the FDA. Nope. Nothing to see. Move along.

Aluminum market manipulation. And copper. And silver. And gold. Nope. Don't look at GS or JPM. Move along.

Artificial interest rates. The Fed. IMF. BIS. Central banks. Nope. Everything looks fine there...

Chris Dodd, his family, associates... Nope. Not fishy.

http://www.jfklibrar...iation_19610427.aspx

The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it.

...

For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence--on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations.

     Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed. It conducts the Cold War, in short, with a war-time discipline no democracy would ever hope or wish to match.

https://en.wikipedia...93industrial_complex

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together.

Move along... Kennedy and Eisenhower were just more conspiracy nuts. YOU SHOULD REJECT THEIR VOICES!!!



http://www.whitehous...versity-commencement

Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems; some of these same voices also doing their best to gum up the works.  They’ll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner.  You should reject these voices.
-Tyrannical asshat

Yes. Reject those voices. Go back to sleep... Did you forget to take your soma? Sleep...

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable
-JFK

Anyone think the figures in the shadows give a crap about how many people die when they force a violent revolution? They won't be on the front lines.
Slow Down Music - Where I commit thought crimes...

Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong. - John Diefenbaker

Vurbal

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Whatever the country or governing political party, this form of protectionism would rather seem to indicate the actions of a puppet government, to me.

+1 - Me too. I just wonder when/if our corporate masters will decide to come out of the shadows.

They won't come out voluntarily. They just don't happen to realize they're re-enacting the American Revolution, having cast themselves as the British East India Company.

The problem with setting yourself up in an ivory tower is you can't see the mob of angry villagers until they're close enough to tear it down. The question isn't so much whether things are going to change as how bad they'll have to get before it happens. We're pretty close to as bad as I was expecting. We're not quite there yet, but definitely in the neighborhood.
I learned to say the pledge of allegiance
Before they beat me bloody down at the station
They haven't got a word out of me since
I got a billion years probation
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Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the danger of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of ''crackpot'' than the stigma of conformity.
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It's not rocket surgery.
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I recommend reading through my Bio before responding to any of my posts. It could save both of us a lot of time and frustration.

Vurbal

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Anyone think the figures in the shadows give a crap about how many people die when they force a violent revolution? They won't be on the front lines.

It's very unlikely to come to that. When the dust settles they'll probably wish it had. Military might is still fundamentally a financial proposition.

Their downfall will be death by a thousand paper cuts. It won't be the corporations in China ignoring patents and copyrights. It will be the soybean farmers in Argentina and Brazil who are already free from Monsanto's grip. It won't be some other country's military that ends their thousand year Reich. The NSA is already doing their best to convince the rest of the world not to do business with our vastly more important tech sector.

Just because they have unlimited money backed by almost as limitless government thuggery it doesn't mean they have the advantage. In fact they don't. If you're the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world you can't win by outlasting your opponent. Anything less than a crushing victory is a defeat. If you're just some guy off the street all you have to do is keep getting back up.

Their real power isn't tangible assets. It's perception. As long as people believe they're invincible they are. If they can't beat down a collection of every day people scattered around the world who only know each other from places like this they suddenly don't look so invincible. They don't feel so invincible either.

When the NSA wiretapping scandal became public the government barely reacted at all and they looked tough. When Bradley Manning leaked embarrassing classified documents to the world they went on the offensive, making an example out of him as a message to the rest of us. When that didn't stem the tide they started to make an example of anybody with the nerve to cross them. After Ed Snowden outed their secret police state it turned into an act of such overwrought hystrionics professional wrestlers started taking notes.

A war isn't over until one side stops fighting. When shock and awe doesn't work you'd better be prepared to go hand to hand in the trenches. That's something this generation of power elite has never had to do. It's easy to be tough when everything is going your way. When the shit hits the fan you find out hubris, greed, and a sense of entitlement are the only things holding your side together.

The endless parade of talking heads repeating the same talking points over isn't a sign of resolve. It's pure panic. Believe me, I know the feeling all to well. It's what happens when my brain overreacts to a stressful social encounter and my fight or flight reflex kicks in. Just like all those liars in Washington it's too late for me to walk away I either shutdown or meltdown.

When I'm panicked like that I know without a doubt I'm being completely rational but nothing could be further from the truth. If it's a meltdown I just keep repeating the same argument over and over because my most basic survival instinct is in control and all other circuits are literally shut down. It's the reaction of a cornered animal. That's what you're seeing out of Washington. Guys like Mike Rogers and James Clapper know they've been caught and they know how much worse it's going to get.

If this were just politics as usual the lies would be full of loopholes and completely lacking in substance. The focus would be purely on changing the subject. What they wouldn't be doing is repeating the same lie most people saw through a month ago and fewer people believed 2 weeks ago the same day yet another leak is published definitively exposing your lie beyond a shadow of a doubt. You don't get to be Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee without knowing how to be evasive and truthy and you certainly don't rise to the top of the intelligence world unless you're an expert at keeping your damn mouth shut.
I learned to say the pledge of allegiance
Before they beat me bloody down at the station
They haven't got a word out of me since
I got a billion years probation
- The MC5

Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the danger of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of ''crackpot'' than the stigma of conformity.
- Thomas J. Watson, Sr

It's not rocket surgery.
- Me


I recommend reading through my Bio before responding to any of my posts. It could save both of us a lot of time and frustration.

Renegade

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Here's a rant about the return of SOPA 3.0. (NSFW- Lots of cussing. Refreshingly so! ;D )



Slow Down Music - Where I commit thought crimes...

Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong. - John Diefenbaker

IainB

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Email from DemandProgress:
(Copied below sans embedded hyperlinks/images.)
CISPA is back. Again.
Don’t worry, you’re not losing it. You didn’t just dream the past year and half. It all happened: We did kill CISPA in 2012. And we killed it earlier this year. Hundreds of thousands of you signed petitions. We forced Obama to issue TWO separate veto threats. The bill died in the Senate. Twice.

And when the Snowden leaks hit, everyone, even the New York Times, agreed there was no way a bill granting more invasive power to the NSA would ever pass Congress.

We weren't sleeping. But they must have been.

Because we learned this week that a group of Senators are pushing a new version of CISPA. Tell your Senators: the NSA has enough power, oppose CISPA!

Senators Diane Feinstein and Saxby Chambliss, the Senate intelligence Committee leaders who’re behind the new CISPA, are also staunch defenders of the NSA’s mass surveillance programs.

Which makes sense: CISPA would make it easier for the NSA to see your private data, and provide legal protection for corporations that violate your rights, their user agreements, and existing law to cooperate with the NSA.

We have to act now. CISPA's supporters are already soliciting help from defense industry lobbyists to get this thing passed. Click here to send a message to your Senator.

Again and again the anti-privacy goons in Congress have circled the wagons to try and pass CISPA. And again and again, we have completely shut them down.

We’ve done it before. We will do it again. Click here to fight back.

Please urge your friends to take action by forwarding this email or using these links:
[fb]    If you're already on Facebook, click here to share with your friends.
[fb]    If you're already on Twitter, click here to tweet about the campaign: Tweet

Thanks,

Demand Progress Team
Paid for by Demand Progress (DemandProgress.org) and not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee. Contributions are not deductible as charitable contributions for federal income tax purposes.


Renegade

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Diane Feinstein. Gee. Go figure. She's a very dangerous psychopath, and certainly one of the top most dangerous ones out there.

They just will not stop. I only see one reasonable solution to put this to rest.
Slow Down Music - Where I commit thought crimes...

Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong. - John Diefenbaker

IainB

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...I only see one reasonable solution to put this to rest.
Yeah. Pass the ruddy bill.

TaoPhoenix

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...I only see one reasonable solution to put this to rest.
Yeah. Pass the ruddy bill.

Naw. Neither of these. Just before the basement level, an Aussie and a New Zealeander calling for the US to burn doesn't count. Because y'all don't have anything to lose. That's the same mistake the Republicans made this month - sometimes fiery fun rhetoric just doesn't make sane sense.


IainB

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^^ I don't really understand what you wrote there @TaoPhoenix, but you mention Republicans - which presumably is political - and US politics are a complete mystery to me.
By the way, what I said above about "Pass the ruddy bill" was rather tongue-in-cheek.    ;)

Stoic Joker

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US politics are a complete mystery to me.

Don't feel bad, we can't figure them out either. Best I can tell it's a lot like bobbing for apples that are floating in a tank of flaming gasoline ... You can't win without getting burned.

TaoPhoenix

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^^ I don't really understand what you wrote there @TaoPhoenix...

Just that fiery words mean something different from anyone not in the country.

Because it's a not dis-similar brand of fiery words that got us to the shutdown mess.

Someone noticed that there's at least a semi-permanent biological flaw at least in US voters that rewards certain disastrous but "strong" phrasing. So right now we're stuck with a strange version of something like Tragedy of the Commons where these critters keep getting re-elected. That was supposed to be the brilliant innovation of the founding gang, but apparently a billion dollar super-PAC can finally knock out that balance checker.

I still stand by my Political-App thread that no one commented on. We're too slow for both 2014 and 2016. But from 2020 on, it's the future of politics. Aka the day social media stops being Farmville and cats and suddenly 188 politicians find themselves out of a job *on the same day*.

"Shutdown, huh? Oops.  Watch this!"

But it only works once.




IainB

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OIC, I think.
I wonder whether all this focus on the short-term potential gains of SOPA/PIP/etc. by lobbies/interested parties hasn't blinded some of them to the risks of losing the long game.
We shall see.
I am seriously concerned that US pressures are likely to screw up the Internet for everyone else and that it could become just another tool for US economic hegemony/colonisation.

J-Mac

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OIC, I think.
I am seriously concerned that US pressures are likely to screw up the Internet for everyone else and that it could become just another tool for US economic hegemony/colonisation.

Which is pretty damn close to what we have now....

Jim

IainB

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The US government/corporate lobbies really do seem most determined about forcing an agreement on TPP. I wonder why?    :tellme:
(Copied below sans embedded hyperlinks/images.)
US Fails To Close TPP Deal As Wikileaks Exposes Discord - Forbes
12/10/2013 @ 9:28AM
Emma Woollacott, Contributor - I cover the control of content on the internet.

The latest round of talks over the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) have failed to lead to a resolution, with ministers confirming that debate is likely to continue into next year.

The announcement comes as Wikileaks releases an internal memo and spreadsheet, revealing that the US is putting heavy pressure on other nations to conform with its demands.
Cropped picture of Joseph Stiglitz, U.S. econo...

Joseph Stiglitz, U.S. economist. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Following four days of talks in Singapore, the heads of the various delegations have today released a statement saying that while they’ve identified what they call “potential landing zones” for the areas that remain contentious, they have failed to reach a resolution as hoped.

“Therefore, we have decided to continue our intensive work in the coming weeks toward such an agreement,” they say. “We will also further our consultations with stakeholders and engage in our respective political processes. Following additional work by negotiators, we intend to meet again next month.”

The statement coincides with the release of two more documents from Wikileaks which reveal just how far apart the US is from the other nations involved in the treaty, with 19 points of disagreement in the area of intellectual property alone. One of the documents speaks of “great pressure” being applied by the US.

Australia in particular is standing firm, objecting to the US’ proposals for copyright protection, parallel importation proposals and criminalization of copyright infringement. It’s also opposed to a measure supported by all the other nations involved to limit the liability of ISPs for copyright infringement by their users. Japan, too – which only joined the talks in March – has vowed to protect its agricultural markets, which the US wishes to see opened up.

But the TPP is causing increasing disquiet in the US, as well as around the world. Over the weekend, campaign group Knowledge Ecology International (KEI) revealed that Nobel prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz of the Columbia University School of Business has written to the negotiators, calling on them to resist a tranche of measures that he says would weaken the 2001 Doha Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health.

These include extending patent terms and lowering the threshold for patentability of medicines, making surgical procedures patentable and mandating monopolies of 12 years on test data for biologic drugs. He also objects to the granting of compulsory licenses on patents, increasing damages for patent and copyright infringement, placing lower limits on injunctions, narrowing copyright exceptions and extending copyright protection to life plus 70 years.

“The TPP proposes to freeze into a binding trade agreement many of the worst features of the worst laws in the TPP countries, making needed reforms extremely difficult if not impossible,” he writes.

His sentiments are echoed by 29 organizations and more than 70 other individuals in a separate letter.

“The primary harm from the life + 70 copyright term is the loss of access to countless books, newspapers, pamphlets, photographs, films, sound recordings and other works that are ‘owned’ but largely not commercialized, forgotten, and lost,” they say. “The extended terms are also costly to consumers and performers, while benefiting persons and corporate owners that had nothing to do with the creation of the work.”

The failure of the talks to reach agreement is a major blow for the US, which hoped to see the deal largely wrapped up by now. The ministers say they’ll meet again next month, but haven’t set any new timeline for completion. And with many of the outstanding issues having been aired for months, it’s hard to see how full agreement will be reached any time soon.