Cyber-Senate's cyber-security cyber-law cyber-scares cyber-rights cyber-fighters On Tuesday the US Senate will meet in a closed-door session to mark up the forthcoming Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2014 (CISA) – and the proposed new rules on data sharing between big biz and government have privacy groups seriously worried. CISA is an offshoot of the proposed Cyber Intelligence Sharing and …
cowritten by NSA-friendly Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), chairwoman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
Now there's a contradictory sentence if ever I read one... Feinstein and Intelligence used together.
On the plus side... it would be a tool for fighting lots of crimes. On the negative... there's lots of gray areas that aren't defined.
My question is, since the NSA is slurping everything anyway, why set up something new? Just let the NSA become crime-fighters.
"only applies if the supplying firm has evidence that the user is a US citizen"...
What part of "... nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws" do you people not understand?
You can't legally discriminate between subjects based on citizenship. Not if they're in the US, anyway. If they're abroad then fair enough, they're not within your jurisdiction so not protected by the 14th Amendment, but if they're on US soil then it makes no difference if they're American or Yemeni or even (*shudder*) Australian...
A fuller statement of the relevant part of the Fourteenth Amendment is this:
"No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."
The amendment appears to constrain State, but not federal, laws. It is silent about whether federal law such as that proposed may apply differently to citizens and non-citizens. That does not mean CISA is a good idea; it is not. The Constitution permits a great many things that are not very bright.
@tom dial: the Supreme Court has consistently ruled that that clause binds the federal govt as well as state govts, by the principle of reverse incorporation. So yes, it is applicable.
And I find it frankly unbelievable that the politicians concerned don't know that.
The reason why national security is secret is because the populace is primarily braindead and has no clue of the threats or function of security measures. Protecting the masses from themselves is a thankless job. For the record authorities could not care less about your e-mail or phone conversations as long as you are not a terrorists or criminal. Your just a number in the system.
For the record authorities could not care less about your e-mail or phone conversations".
That's the thing people don't get about the security service. It spends more time spying on its own people than any foreign terrorists or criminals. Anyone who's politically active gets a file opened on them, anyone who challenges state power. What do you think all those spooks have been doing since the end of the cold war. The only difference is they don't have the pretext of defending us from the commies.
Hoover data comprehensively;
Under "legal" fictions (either terms and conditions or legislative mandates) that effectively gut citizens' fundamental rights;
Promote/require the storage of all the data in private cloud paid for and controlled by those who govern, but whose operations are not subject to the same constraints and public oversights as government officials;
Implement legislation and/or procedures defined by executive order that allow those who govern to mine the data to look for criminal offenses and take actions that effectively circumvent due process with complete impunity
and, Voila! the classic Police State.
Power President Obama will deny himself this power when pigs fly. In his defense, he didn't start this, he's just been along for the ride.
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