Time To Speak Up About CISPA: We Shouldn't Be Scared Into Giving Up Our Privacy

from the speak-out-now dept

A bunch of groups are teaming up this week to call for a week of action against CISPA just as Congress is gearing up, yet again, to push through this cybersecurity bill based on a lot of FUD, with little to back it up. To be clear, there are a lot of challenges around online (can we dump the stupid "cyber" prefix?) security out there, and it's clear that there is plenty of malicious and government-sponsored hacking and attacks. But we need to put this all in perspective. First off, there is already tremendous incentive to combat these attacks, and there are existing methods to do so. Second, no one has given a reasonable response to explain how something like CISPA will do anything at all to help prevent such attacks in the future. Third, while these attacks may be economically damaging, there is little evidence of them creating real physical harm to date. That's not to say it's not possible in the future, but stories of airplanes falling from the sky are quite exaggerated. Fourth, and most importantly, no one has explained why we all need to sacrifice our own privacy for these vague and undefined benefits.

A bunch of groups are fighting this, and now is the time to take part. EFF and Fight for the Future have put together a simple page to help you take action. As they point out there are three key objectionable parts to CISPA:

• Eviscerating existing privacy laws by giving overly broad legal immunity to companies who share users' private information, including the content of communications, with the government.
• Authorizing companies to disclose users' data directly to the NSA, a military agency that operates secretly and without public accountability.
• Broad definitions that allow users' sensitive personal information to be used for a range of purposes, including for "national security," not just computer and network security.

None of these are even remotely necessary to allow for effectively combating online attacks, but all certainly would be quite handy in helping the government snoop on the activities of citizens (and non-citizens) without much oversight. Considering how often we've seen other laws passed in a flurry of FUD around other "threats" later turn out to be abused by government officials for the sake of snooping, rather than any legitimate reason, we should be very concerned about these efforts here.

Filed Under: cispa, cybersecurity, fud, privacy, security, speak out, week of action

It's Time To Let Politicians Know That Using Secretive Trade Agreements To Meddle With The Internet Is Unacceptable

from the speak-up,-speak-out dept

Last week, we noted how the anti-SOPA protest had woken up people around the globe to one of the legacy content industry's favorite tricks: sneaking dreadful IP expansionist policies through international trade agreements. In particular, it woke people up to ACTA, an agreement that was basically a done deal, and already signed by many of the participants. But now there's a fight on in Europe over whether or not it will really get ratified -- and it all comes down to whether or not the EU Parliament moves forward. And even while some are wondering if it's dead and superpowers like Germany are appearing to at least have some level of second thoughts over the plan... it's still moving forward.

As we had mentioned, a ton of plans for in-person protests had sprung up across Europe, and most of those are happening tomorrow. Reports are coming in about how these protests are really having an impact, and many people are hoping to ramp up the pressure with the protests tomorrow.

If you want to see where the local protest are being held, the folks over at Access have a great summary page, and Fight for the Future -- who was instrumental in organizing the anti-SOPA blackouts -- has set up KillActa.org to make it easier to speak out against ACTA as well. Who knows if ACTA can really be stopped, but it's really amazing to see so many people speaking out against these agreements. International trade agreements are considered boring and rarely do people pay attention to them (outside of big "free trade" agreements that set off certain groups). But to see so many people learning about how these deals sneak in dangerous provisions, it suggests that perhaps we can finally convince politicians that mucking with the internet solely for special interests -- and doing it through totally secretive processes -- is simply not acceptable any more.

Filed Under: acta, europe, free speech, politics, protests, sopa, speak out, tpp