Last night's budget bill wasn't all about avoiding a government shutdown. Packed inside the 2,000-page bill announced by Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) is the full text of the controversial Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) of 2015. If you'll recall, the measure passed the Senate back in October, leaving it up to the House to approve the bill that encourages businesses to share details of security breaches and cyber attacks.
Despite being labeled as cybersecurity legislation, critics of CISA argue that it's a surveillance bill that would allow companies to share user info with the US government and other businesses. As TechDirt points out, this version of the bill stripped important protections that would've prevented directly sharing details with the NSA and required any personally identifying details to be removed before being shared. It also removes restrictions on how the government can use the data.
I guess I was wrong to think it would be more people would be interested in how their information is being used by the government.... yet the government hasn't proven they can execute anti-terrorism efforts in plain sight.
I guess I was wrong to think it would be more people would be interested in how their information is being used by the government.... yet the government hasn't proven they can execute anti-terrorism efforts in plain sight.
I want to let everyone know CISA was passed as part of the Omnibus bill. CISA was pushed by Hollywood bigwigs and the RIAA due to counter what they considered to be copyright infringements. This will likely limit the viral videos posted online, and will probably significantly reduce streaming totals for many songs.
Far more importantly, for those in the US, this is a significant blow to the First Amendment, because it also means sharing content from news sources not controlled by the major corporations and our government is now harder to successfully share. This is a much more important aspect of the legislation our government can and will use to limit press freedom (the US had already dropped to 49/180 surveyed countries.
The bill's sponsors had pushed this bill on many prior occasions, but Americans spoke up and Congress failed to pass the legislation every time, so they slipped CISA into this bill to get it passed and signed into law The establishment in both major parties wanted it to pass, so don't blame the Democrats or Republicans alone for this -- both are equally to blame.
I want to let everyone know CISA was passed as part of the Omnibus bill. CISA was pushed by Hollywood bigwigs and the RIAA due to counter what they considered to be copyright infringements. This will likely limit the viral videos posted online, and will probably significantly reduce streaming totals for many songs.
Far more importantly, for those in the US, this is a significant blow to the First Amendment, because it also means sharing content from news sources not controlled by the major corporations and our government is now harder to successfully share. This is a much more important aspect of the legislation our government can and will use to limit press freedom (the US had already dropped to 49/180 surveyed countries.
The bill's sponsors had pushed this bill on many prior occasions, but Americans spoke up and Congress failed to pass the legislation every time, so they slipped CISA into this bill to get it passed and signed into law The establishment in both major parties wanted it to pass, so don't blame the Democrats or Republicans alone for this -- both are equally to blame.
Thank you for bringing this back up to everyone's attention.
