House Rules Committee Basically Rejects Any CISPA Amendments That Would Protect Privacy
from the because,-privacy,-pshah,-who-needs-it? dept
There were a number of different amendments put forth for CISPA today -- including many that sought to protect people's privacy and to make sure that the NSA didn't get first dibs on any information. The House Rules Committee met for about three hours today to hear about the various amendments and then basically rejected all of the privacy amendments. Rep. Justin Amash seemed reasonably confused as to why the Rules Committee would reject his amendment, which (as summarized) would "permit an entity to provide through enforceable contract that it will not share personally identifiable information with the federal government." Other rejected amendments included the amendment from Rep. Schiff that would require companies sharing data with the government under CISPA to make "reasonable efforts" to remove personally identifiable info of people who were unrelated to the "cyberthreat" in question. Another rejected amendment, put forth by Rep. Schakowsky would have required that the first point of info sharing be a civilian agency (DHS) instead of military (NSA/DOD).All of these seemed like reasonable responses to the privacy concerns raised by the White House and others. And they were all rejected before they even got to the floor. Yes, this wasn't about them being voted down by the whole House. Rather, the Rules Committee voted not to even let them be voted on by the House. Why? As far as I could tell from the hearing, the answer was "because [reasons]." Also some garbage about how no one intended the law to be misused. Um. If that's the case, why not put it in the law to block it from being abused?
There is one amendment, from Rep. Jackson Lee, contains a few nods towards privacy, and does make clear that service providers are not required to provide info. It would also seek to protect a very specific class of private data (that stored by a company that also provides info services to the government), but that's got little to do with the key privacy protections proposed elsewhere. There is also an amendment from Rep. Barton that stops companies from using any info they get from each other for marketing purposes, but that's really not a huge issue with the CISPA related data. Neither of these are serious privacy protections, and neither are definitely going to get adopted either.
So, now the CISPA fight will go to the floor of the House without any serious meaningful amendments concerning privacy, and (as is typical) the House is likely to pass it. The next fight will be in the Senate to see what sort of awful proposal comes out of there as well, and whether or not it matches up with CISPA.
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Filed Under: amendments, cispa, privacy, rejected
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Handy 'Politician->English' translation:
'Such an abuse of (insert law here) would of course never happen, so it would be nothing more than a waste of time adding amendments to the law explicitly prohibiting such actions, or setting penalties and punishments for those that abuse the law.'
Translation:
'The potential abuses brought up will happen, repeatedly, and we know it. However, adding in amendments to prohibit or outlaw such abuses would result in those abusing the law actually being held accountable for their actions, which could lead to large companies or governmental agencies being sued for such violations, and therefor I refuse to even consider the idea of adding such amendments.'
Incidentally, looks like the House at least has called the White House's bluff, time to see if Obama will actually hold true on his threat of a veto, or if he'll just cave and let it go through unopposed.
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Re: Handy 'Politician->English' translation:
The potential abuses brought up are intentional. We fully intended on engaging in them, but we hope you won't notice.
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Re: Re: Handy 'Politician->English' translation:
Even shorter: You're a peasant, or a serf; whatever. STFU! Eat your gruel! Damnit, you people are annoying!!!111"
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Re: Re: Handy 'Politician->English' translation:
Quote reference: John Fenderson “It's easier to fix the government…"
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Re: Re: Re: Handy 'Politician->English' translation:
I'm beginning to suspect the whole system has now been conquered. We have no more pawns to queen.
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Re: Re: Re: Handy 'Politician->English' translation:
I'm not sure why you keep bringing this up as if you're proving some kind of point. Why don't you just say what you point is? Unless you're just jumping at any chance to sling inaccurate insults like "Mr. BIG Govt".
Also, as Uriel-238 points out, this is an example of corporate abuse and government corruption. It is one of the far too many places where government and corporations are all but indistinguishable.
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Re: Handy 'Politician->English' translation:
You fucking pie. eating. asshats.
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Re: Handy 'Politician->English' translation:
The likelihood of Obama vetoing the bill inversely correlates the amount of kickbacks he receives if it passes.
This administration nauseates me...
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Re:
Ya think?!?
Remind me, who was it that elected these asshats?
[*crickets*]
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EFF action center
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/04/48-hours-left-stop-cispa-house
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They learned nothing from DMCA?
Are our representatives just ignorant or are they being willfully ignorant.
No...our reps have been bought, specifically by those who will be abusing CISPA.
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Re: They learned nothing from DMCA?
I think this should be considered a law, along the lines of Murphy's law, or maybe a corollary to it. Truly a depressing thought.
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If Rep. Jackson Lee's proposal goes through, does that mean any service provider would be liable for supplying information on third parties and thus loose the loophole of amnesty? IRL, there are very few service providers who do not supply services to local law enforcement, government agencies, and various public services, since the norm is to give these agencies perks.
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