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  • May 21st, 2012 @ 12:06pm

    What makes the Queen a King?

    Persistent in these facts is the Idea that the "real" powers have spoken on the coming trend in Cybersecurity and
    whoever wants to head a relevant federal agency had better show up ready to say "yes" to the conventional beaurocratic wisdom or learn to fly unceremoniously out the window.

    Of course, the "done deal" that shows up in the American legislative tea leaves is yet another indistinguishable version of PIPA, SOPA, ACTA, CISPA or Six Strikes....In short, yet one more repackage of assorted nullifications of American Constitutional and Civil Liberties....things like broad grants of Immunity to govermental and Private agencies for damages inflicted on innocents; conversion of Presumption of Innocence into (cough, cough) rebuttable presumption of guilt; rechartering of National Security Agencies to operate within the United States with American Citizens as legitimate subjects of investigation; expansion of government and private party actions that can be taken prior to or without warrant; incorporation in written law of the effectiveness of Commercial TOS waivers as dispositive for the waiver of Constitutionally protected rights.

    Took a lot of Balls to present the American People with these already known bundles of nullifications of their Civil and Constitutional Rights....Will take even less brains to offer up the next pretty package with these same traps restated....

    Yet,if these "powers that be" were so powerful and unopposable, don't you think they could have saved themselves from the public bitch-slapping the American People gave them the first time around in the matters of PIPA, SOPA, ACTA, CISPA?

    The special interest beneficiaries of these laws don't just "want" Immunity from Liability....They desperately NEED Immunity from liability....and the American People said, very LOUDLY...."NO! You cant't have Immunity from Liability!"

    Why?

    Because the next Public Bitch-Slapping is going to send the political hacks who protect these special Interests permenantly into the closet in a coma.
  • May 21st, 2012 @ 10:49am

    Re: Not good

    Perhaps these guys are more useful on the outside....After all, three hundred die hard sleepers need to be woken up.....Of course, they might all pull a Chris Dodd and go where the money is.....

    Is this a real loss? Not if "the money" is where they've always been.....
  • Apr 26th, 2012 @ 9:50pm

    Re: Re: Re: Hey wait!

    For the right Bill a veto could be really really popular...
  • Apr 26th, 2012 @ 9:44pm

    Re: Re: Hey wait!

    He might veto it if he looked out the White house window and saw a public reaction Tsunami higher than Mount Everest cresting over the Potomac.
  • Apr 26th, 2012 @ 9:39pm

    Worst possible CISPA, best possible invitation for CISPA takedown

    They insist. It's their road or the Highway.

    They think three hundred million Americans can be served whatever rancid, even toxic, borsht comes off the legislative menu without consequenses: It's PIPA one week; SOPA the next; ACTA, for breakfast and lunch the following month; and, for supper a year later, you too can look forward to washing down the past years gastronomic nightmare from our American Congress with the delightfully fecal aroma of CISPA in the air.

    In a sense, it's good that with this latest passed version of CISPA, these Legislators have come out of the closet and told us more clearly than ever EXACTLY what the THINK.

    More of the sleeping American Democracy Should hear and begin to REALLY understand their message. Only then will the REAL power behind three hundred million voices be heard. Perhaps then the legislatures will be cleaned out from floor to ceiling in both houses; down to the skanky fleas and ticks and lice the live their; washed down in every nook and crany with disinfectant; and a new generation of leaders invited in who have been born again to the REAL meaning of the American Constitution.
  • Apr 25th, 2012 @ 10:38pm

    Are the pecuniary interests of current Copyright Holders immediate National Security Interests?

    Let's grant for a second that there are honerable, intelligent and well intentioned people whose calling is to be responsiblle each day and each second for the actual physical security of the the commonwealth.

    So, why would such people, with full access to their best faculties, propose a Bill like CISPA, stuffed as is now widely known with the most adverse implications imaginable for the Constitutional Rights of every American?

    If one is to take CISPA in isolation, one might say, "OOOOps! Must have been an oversight or some unintended consequences! Perhaps, an afterthought; or two."

    But isn't this the same Political Establishment that produced PIPA, SOPA, and ACTA? And didn't those laws suffer from the same articulated abreviations of Constitutional Rights as CISPA? Isn't that EXACTLY why enraged Americans rejected those laws?

    Is it impossible to believe that American National Security Proffessionals could not draft a narrowly taylord protocol granting the reasonable rights needed to address cybersecuriy risks of essential National Security assets?

    Our problem is not CISPA or PIPA or SOPA or ACTA; but rather, our problem is with what lies behind the recurring totality of these laws: An American political class that tells Americans more clearly each day with each new legislative proposal, that they must accept some nullification of their Constitutional Rights in the interest of protecting existing pecuniary previledges of Intellectual Property distributors under current Copyright Law.
  • Apr 23rd, 2012 @ 7:14pm

    waiver of civil liberties or denial of civll liberties?

    Regretably, everywhere that citizens function as customers, they are being stripped of their most fundamental constititional rights under the guise of "informed" waiver by contractual consent.

    The thus far unresolved question is how constitutional rights of Free Speech, Access to Appellette Courts, Freedom from unauthorized searches, or confiscation of private property without prior judicial review, became waivable under commercial Terms of Service (TOSs.)

    The even more immediate question is why the burden is perpetually on Private Individual citizens to overcome anew a seemingly infinite iteration of impairment to their constitutional rights. After all, the factual distinction between price, or product quality or delivery date, functionality or use, are a KNOWN qualitative order of magnitude DIFFERENT from the constitutional rights of private citizens. The inclusion of Consttutional perogatives in Corporate Terms of Service, like the resulting damage to civil liberties CANNOT be an afterthought.

    The News is proof enough: Ten or twenty or thirty ISPs (regulated public monopolies no less) enter into private agreement for the benefit of third party private entities (not their customers) called a Six Strike program under which the ISPs agree to present their millions of customers with imposed shared terms under which the ISPs presume to possess essentially ALL the powers and rights as private parties (including Immunity from liability) which enraged citizens sent into the legislative toilet bowl with their rejections of PIPA, SOPA, ACTA, and CISPA.

    What is the legal basis for these presumptions in the aftermath of the defeat of PIPA, SOPA, ACTA and CISPA? Those millions of customers can find their "rights" defined exclusively within the framework of the ISPs Terms of Service. The mere fact that those Terms of Service effectively nullify the constitutional righs of customers falls into the realm of convenient afterthought: Want independent Appellette review of the fact that the ISP invades your right to privacy and due process by inspecting your personal files without prior judicial process? Have you been falsely accused and wish to sue your accuser in court for damages?

    For millions of American citizens the answer to those questions are no longer found in the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, but in their ISPs Terms of Service.

    Where in the terms of Service? Look for your right to Due Process under "Arbitration Clause".

    It is not that the same public anger that defeated PIPA and SOPA and ACTA and CISPA can't find expression yet again on behalf of civil liberties; but, the infinite repetiveness of these insults must be addressed, or we might discover ultimatelty that we won a million battles for civil liberties, but lost the war,

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