CISPA Sponsor Claims Opposition Is '14 Year Olds In Their Basement'

from the taking-the-high-road? dept

The House Committee on Rules has been debating CISPA and what will be covered in the official floor debate and what amendments will be presented tomorrow or the next day (whenever it hits the floor). Much of it was routine stuff, but there were some typical bogus grandstanding about the giant threat of a cyberattack that's going to kill us all (be afraid!) if we don't do something (no worry about if that something will actually help). Representative Mike Rogers, the sponsor of CISPA and its main backer, decided that he was going to take the lowest road possible in talking about the concerns of privacy advocates by saying that the only opposition is "14-year-olds in their basement." That statement followed the claim that "Silicon Valley CEOs support CISPA."

Update: Sina Khanifer has uploaded a video of Rogers making these comments. This is insulting on a whole variety of levels. First of all, it suggests that privacy advocates are nothing more than children. That's ridiculous. The White House, who have raised privacy concerns about the bill, are 14-year-olds in their basement? Rogers honestly thinks insulting the President is the way to get CISPA passed? The ACLU are 14-year-olds in their basement? Really? The tens of thousands of people who have contacted Congress in the past few weeks about this are all 14-year-olds in their basement? Rogers owes the public he represents a massive apology.

Second, the comment about Silicon Valley CEOs is not true. Yes, there are some tech companies who are in favor of CISPA, mainly because of the liability protections they would get. But it is hardly an across the board belief. Many, many tech companies are all quite concerned about CISPA and what it will mean for the privacy of their users. Both Mozilla and Reddit have strongly spoken out against CISPA. Do they not count?

Third, the idea that because some Silicon Valley CEOs support CISPA, it means that there couldn't possibly be any concern. This is a outgrowth of the myth that SOPA was only stopped because tech companies spoke out. As such, politicians like Rogers think all they need to do is appease tech CEOs, and not the public, whom they're supposed to represent. That Rogers would so outwardly admit that as long as a small group of tech CEOs favor the bill (which is already a highly questionable statement), that he can ignore the public and insult them, is really stunning.

Of course, what this really shows is Rep. Mike Rogers' absolute disdain for privacy. He doesn't take the concerns of the public, of privacy advocates, and even of the White House seriously. Instead, he sees privacy as something that should be mocked and those who support it insulted. Why should such a person be in charge of wiping out privacy laws on the internet?

Filed Under: cispa, concerns, congress, cybersecurity, mike rogers, opposition, privacy

Congress Quickly And Quietly Rolls Back Insider Trading Rules For Itself

from the can't-mess-with-the-profits dept

In November of 2011, the TV show 60 Minutes did a big expose on insider trading within Congress. While everyone else is subject to basic insider trading rules, it turned out that members of Congress were exempt from the rules. And, as you would imagine, many in Congress have access to market-moving, non-public information. And they made use of it. To make lots and lots of money. Of course, after that report came out and got lots of attention, Congress had to act, and within months they had passed the STOCK Act with overwhelming support in Congress to make insider trading laws that apply to everyone else finally apply to Congress and Congressional staffers as well. As that link notes:

The lopsided votes showed lawmakers desperate to regain public trust in an election year, when the public approval rating of Congress has sunk below 15 percent.

Of course, here we are in 2013 and, lo and behold, it is no longer an election year. And apparently some of the details of the ban on insider trading were beginning to chafe Congressional staffers, who found it hard to pad their income with some friendly trades on insider knowledge.

So... with very little fanfare, Congress quietly rolled back a big part of the law late last week. Specifically the part that required staffers to post disclosures about their financial transactions, so that the public could make sure there was no insider trading going on. Congress tried to cover up this fairly significant change because they, themselves, claimed that it would pose a "national risk" to have this information public. A national risk to their bank accounts.

It was such a national risk that Congress did the whole thing quietly, with no debate. The bill was introduced in the Senate on Thursday and quickly voted on late that night when no one was paying attention. Friday afternoon (the best time to sneak through news), the House picked it up by unanimous consent. The House ignored its own promise to give Congress three days to read a bill before holding a vote, because this kind of thing is too important to let anyone read the bill before Congress had to pass it.

And, of course, yesterday, President Obama signed it into law. Because the best way to rebuild trust in Congress, apparently, is to roll back the fact that people there need to obey the same laws as everyone else. That won't lead the public to think that Congress is corrupt. No, not at all.

Filed Under: congress, corruption, insider trading, transparency

IBM Sends 200 Execs To Capitol Hill To Demand The Right To Send Your Private Info To The NSA

from the nice-one,-guys dept

We've talked about various tech companies supporting CISPA, which is really shameful and short-sighted. Yes, it protects them from liability if they trample all over your privacy and provide your private info to the government -- which is why they support it. But if they were truly customer focused companies, they would know that violating your privacy is no way to build a loyal customer base. And, apparently, the right to violate your privacy and hand that info to the government is so important to IBM that it has sent 200 executives to Capital Hill today to lobby in favor of passing CISPA. CISPA is expected to go to a floor vote in the House either this Wednesday or Thursday.

Nearly 200 senior IBM executives are flying into Washington to press for the passage of a controversial cybersecurity bill that will come up for a vote in the House this week.

The IBM executives will pound the pavement on Capitol Hill Monday and Tuesday, holding nearly 300 meetings with lawmakers and staff. Over the course of those two days, their mission is to convince lawmakers to back a bill that’s intended to make it easier for industry and government to share information about cyber threats with each other in real time.

What they still can't explain is what laws currently get in the way of this information sharing? We've been asking for years and no one has answered. Everyone agrees that information sharing around an attack can be useful in stopping it, but no one has explained why that information sharing (a) requires a new law or (b) can't be done without wiping out all basic privacy protections for personal info currently provided under existing law.

Even more ridiculous is that IBM flat out admits that they want to be able to send your info to the NSA. We've pointed out for a while that one of the major concerns with CISPA is that the NSA -- a military agency -- would get access to your info, despite the general prohibition on spying on Americans. Of course, the NSA has twisted that mandate ridiculously, such that it believes it can now spy on anything so long as they claim it may help them in finding a foreign threat. Technically, the law is about the "target" of the information, and the NSA (and potentially the secret ruling from the FISA Court) has interpreted this to mean that as long as the target of the investigation is as foreign threat, then the NSA can snoop through anything in pursuit of that target.

Of course, most folks have been trying to play down the fact that the NSA would get the info. But not IBM. Nope, they're thrilled to send your private info right to the NSA:

[IBM VP of government affairs Chris] Padilla, however, says companies need to be able to share threat data directly with the NSA “because that’s where the expertise is.”

“It really is a simple matter. The expertise in the U.S. government on cybersecurity largely rests in one place, and that's the National Security Agency,” he said. “They tend to know the most, the soonest about cyber threats and I think, frankly, there is a certain amount of feeling in the business community that you should be able to work directly and share information directly with the agency that has the most expertise.”

While the NSA does have some knowledge on cybersecurity, it's an exaggeration to suggest that they have "the expertise" on the subject. It also does nothing to explain why your private info should be included.

Filed Under: chris padilla, cispa, congress, cyberattacks, cybersecurity, lobbying, nsa, privacy, private info
Companies: ibm

Congress Planning To Debate CISPA Behind Closed Doors; No Public Scrutiny Allowed

from the shameful dept

We've been hearing for a while that when the planned markup occurs next week for CISPA, that the House Intelligence Committee is intending to hold a closed markup, basically hiding the discussion and the possible amendments from the public. There is no good reason for this. The Intelligence Committee will claim, of course, that it needs to do this so that confidential information can be discussed in debating the markup, but that's hogwash. There are numerous concerns with the bill that can and should be addressed publicly. If there are key concerns about classified info getting out, that's easy enough to avoid, since so much that CISPA touches on has nothing to do with classified info -- and whatever comes up can be dealt with appropriately.

The truth is that this is yet another way to try to hide from the public on this issue. Congress doesn't want an open discussion on the many problems with CISPA, so it does what it does best: try to hide things away and rush them through when (hopefully) not enough people are looking. It makes you wonder just what CISPA's supporters are so worried about. Congress is supposed to work for the public, not hide things away from the public. This isn't a situation where they're discussing classified info or plans -- but merely a bill focused on information sharing between the government and private companies. Any markup on CISPA needs to be public.

Filed Under: cispa, congress, house intelligence committee, markup, openness, privacy, scrutiny

Groups Call On Congress To Explore Fixing DMCA's Broken Anti-Circumvention Provisions

from the about-time dept

A bunch of companies (including us) and public interest groups all came together this week to ask Congress to hold hearings to look into fixing the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions, and to recognize that any law that says you don't actually own what you've bought is a big problem. It focuses mainly on the problems with mobile phone unlocking, but asks Congress to go further than just a duct taped fix, and to actually explore why the cell phone unlocking problem came about and to fix the real root cause: an anti-circumvention provision that prevents people from making use of products they've actually bought.

In the longer term, we believe that the widespread concern about cell phone unlocking illustrates how these parts of the DMCA can interfere with consumer rights and competition policy. This interference is not limited to the realm of mobile communications devices. Congress must take action to ensure that laws and policies are keeping up with the pace of technological change. Not addressing these questions will stunt advances in access to digital media for people with disabilities and may prevent new innovations and competitive uses for emerging devices, as uncertainties around the law and the three-year cycle creates a chilling effect for individuals, businesses, innovators and investors who may be covered by the law.

To that end, we request that as the leadership of the two committees of jurisdiction, you convene hearings this year to investigate these possible reforms to the anticircumvention provisions of the DMCA in order to begin a thorough discussion of these problems.

Actually getting Congress to care about this may take some work, but it is a key issue if the US really wants to remain competitive with other countries. Furthermore, anyone who claims that we can't fix this part of the DMCA because of international obligations is really only demonstrating why IP issues shouldn't be a part of any trade agreement.

Filed Under: 1201, anti-circumvention, congress, copyright, dmca, fix dmca

Surprise: Register Of Copyrights Expected To Call For Reduction In Copyright Term

from the legal-scrum-about-to-begin dept

For a long time now, the idea of an overhaul of copyright law in the US has mostly been seen as a pipedream. However, it appears that the Register of Copyright, Maria Pallante, may actually be angling for a major bit of copyright reform. Coming up next Wednesday, she's going to be testifying before the House Judiciary Committee on her supposed "Call for Updates to U.S. Copyright Law." Apparently, on March 4th, she gave a talk at Columbia University which has remained amazingly under the radar until now, in which she proposed a long list of possible copyright reforms, which are likely to headline the hearings next week. It's fairly impressive, given how much attention copyright law has been getting lately, that she could present a surprising call for massive changes to the law, and not have a single person report on it immediately after the event ended. However, that is the case.

Having spoken to a few people who were either there or who spoke to people who were there, it appears that Pallante is proposing changes touching on nearly every part of copyright law, and as you might expect, it's a very mixed bag, though I'll withhold final judgment until we see the full details. However, the big one would be a change in copyright term length, to effectively "roll back" the Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act with one caveat. That is, she's proposing switching us back to a life plus fifty year copyright, but with the ability to renew for that additional 20 years for the tiny percentage of works that makes sense for. While, in the grand scheme of things, life + 50 is still ridiculously too long for copyright, this would be the first major reduction in copyright terms in the history of the US. That's notable.

There are a number of other issues that she apparently is suggesting, including expanding collective licensing, "reforming" the DMCA exemptions process that has generated so much controversy lately over phone unlocking, a change to the DMCA's safe harbors, some sort of effort around dealing with the orphan works issue (something the Copyright Office has been trying for for a while), and a "review" of statutory damages. This could get very interesting -- though it's unclear if it will be interesting in a good way or bad way. Once you open up the law, you have to realize that things could go in either direction. At the very least, a lot of lobbyists on all sides of copyright are about to be very busy for quite some time.

As we get more details, we'll be writing more about this, I'm sure. And, of course, we'll do our best to cover the hearing on Wednesday.

Filed Under: congress, copyright reform, copyright term, dmca exemptions, judiciary committee, maria pallante, register of copyright, safe harbors

Why Shouldn't New Legislative Data Flow Directly Into Wikipedia

from the automate-that dept

There's an interesting event going on today and tomorrow at the Cato Institute, with a very practical focus: looking at ways to automate the process of getting legislative data into Wikipedia. That is, when new bills are introduced, and as they make their way through Congress and to the President, is there any reason that data doesn't automatically populate to Wikipedia?

Our project to produce enhanced XML markup of federal legislation is well under way, and we hope to use this data to make more information available to the public about how bills affect existing law, federal agencies, and spending, for example.

What better way to spread knowledge about federal public policy than by supporting the growth of Wikipedia content?

There are a bunch of services out there that present such legislative data, but having a straight XML feed from Congress to Wikipedia seems like an all around good idea.

Filed Under: congress, data, legislation, wikipedia, xml

How Much Does It Cost To Win Election To Congress?

from the a-lot dept

A year ago, we wrote about a fantastic episode of the radio program This American Life, which was all about lobbying. One part of it revealed just how much time our elected officials in Congress spend fundraising, and the numbers were somewhat astounding. Both major political parties have set up phone banks across the street from the Capitol (because it's seen as demeaning to do the calls directly from your Congressional office) and members of the House and the Senate spend a ridiculous amount of time there. The report suggested multiple hours each day on average, just focused on raising money for their re-election campaign. It's really quite incredible.

The folks over at MapLight recently used Federal Elections Commission data on the 2012 elections to work out just how much it costs to win a seat in Congress:

• House members, on average, each raised $1,689,580, an average of $2,315 every day during the 2012 cycle.
• Senators, on average, each raised $10,476,451, an average of $14,351 every day during the 2012 cycle.

No wonder they're hitting the phones every day. Of course, since these are averages, and averages can be skewed, it might help to dig in a bit, and thankfully, MapLight has supplied all the data in a handy dandy spreadsheet. Digging a bit deeper, we see that the campaign that got the highest amount of money is (no surprise) Elizabeth Warren's Senate campaign, which raised $42,506,349. That's a real outlier, as the second highest amount was less than half of that (Sherrod Brown, who raised $20,945,196). The lowest amount for a Senate campaign? Angus King, the Independent from Maine who raised just $2,964,323 -- though he's beloved in Maine and most people thought he had the campaign locked up from the beginning (which is a good thing, since we need more non-partisans in Congress, and King seems to be quite good). There were a few other campaigns around $3 million as well. At the very least, the data suggests that $3 million is the basic entry fee. The median for Senate campaigns pops out at $9,341,391 -- not far off from the mean. That median campaign was Dean Hellers.

On the House side, there were a few clear outliers, topped by Michele Bachmann's $25,894,721 -- though I assume much of that was raised back when she was running for President -- so not particularly representative. The other outlier on the high end: Speaker of the House John Boehner's $22,024,288. No one else came even remotely close. Third place was House Majority Leader Eric Cantor who took in $7,640,467. Note that Bachmann and Boehner actually raised more than any victorious Senate campaign, other than Warren's. The lowest amount raised? That would be Eni Faleomavaega (who?) who raised just $110,570. Of course, he's a non-voting "delegate" to the House, representing American Samoa's at-large district. Similarly, another non-voting delegate, Gregorio Sablan (from the Northern Mariana Islands) raised just $111,145. The lowest amount raised by a winning voting House member would be the $212,068 raised by Jose Serrano. The median amount in the House (including the non-voting members...) is $1,350,902 (for Rep. Janice Schakowsky). That's just a bit lower than the mean, which is probably the impact of the two massive outliers on the high end.

Of course, this data only looks at the winners, not the losers, and you could make a case that that data is pretty relevant as well. Still, the data makes it clear that successfully running for office requires a lot of money, which is why our politicians spend so much time fundraising. If all that fundraising kept them away from making bad laws, perhaps it would be a good thing, but, of course, part of the problem is that implicit in at least some of the fundraising effort is that these politicians will scratch the back of the donors -- which is how we end up in a world where so many politicians seem to focus on crony capitalism and rewarding those who fund their campaign, over what may be best for their actual constituents.

Filed Under: congress, cost, elections

Latest Congressional Attempt To 'Fix' Mobile Phone Unlocking Just Punts The Issue Until Later

from the not-a-good-idea dept

Ah, Congress. Even when they're doing something, they're good at not really accomplishing much. We've already written about some various proposals on Capitol Hill to respond to the White House's request for Congress to make phone unlocking legal, contrary to the Librarian of Congress' decision to remove it from DMCA exemptions. So far, as we noted, all of the bills really failed to tackle the real issue, and some were just poorly thought out entirely. At the end of that piece, we noted rumors that Rep. Goodlatte was introducing a bill. Late Monday, Senator Leahy (with Senators Grassley, Franken and Hatch) introduced his bill and it's believed to be the same one that Goodlatte is likely to push in the House. Since Leahy and Goodlatte lead the Judiciary Committees in the Senate and the House, it has to be assumed that this bill has the pole position in being the one likely to get traction.

If so, it's a disaster. It does nothing to fix the problem. Worse, it just kicks the can down the road in the hopes that people will forget about it. Here's what it does:

1. It tells the Librarian of Congress to "repeal" the existing failure to exempt phone unlocking and replace it with the exemption that was put in place back in the last rulemaking in 2010 (which was a weaker unlocking rule than the one before it). That "new" / "old" ruling will stick around until the next rulemaking in 2015 when the Librarian might decide to dump it again.
2. Within one year, the Librarian of Congress, with the help of the Register of Copyrights, is supposed to determine whether or not to extend the exemption further to things like tablets (as requested by the White House).
3. It explicitly states that nothing in the bill changes anything of importance.

In other words, "oh, gosh, someone noticed how totally screwed up the system is, and how the walls are crumbling, and let's just patch up this one little hole here with a bit of spackle." This is not a solution. This is a total punt by Congress. The other bills proposed so far have been bad, but this is worse.

Congress has a real chance to fix something here, but so far has chosen not to actually take a position of leadership and do anything. How typical.

Filed Under: bob goodlatte, congress, copyright, dmca, librarian of congress, patrick leahy, unlocking