{"id":23172,"date":"2015-10-22T11:05:22","date_gmt":"2015-10-22T18:05:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.backwoodshome.com\/blogs\/ClaireWolfe\/?p=23172"},"modified":"2015-10-22T11:05:22","modified_gmt":"2015-10-22T18:05:22","slug":"i-try-to-avoid-thinking-about-proposed-legislation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/2015\/10\/22\/i-try-to-avoid-thinking-about-proposed-legislation\/","title":{"rendered":"I try to avoid thinking about proposed legislation"},"content":{"rendered":"

I really do. But sometimes the combination of Orwell and Rand becomes too obtrusive to bear. To wit: the CISA blowup<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The gloriously bipartisan Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015<\/a>, sponsored by freedom-loving Republican Richard Burr (NC) and — guess who? — our old friend Dianne Feinstein (D-Control Freak) would “allow” tech companies to “voluntarily” share information about their customers with the federal “security” apparatus “so it can be analyzed for signs of lawbreaking \u2013 be it computer related or not.”<\/p>\n

Companies that “volunteer” would be given legal immunity against angry customers. But as the linked article in The Register<\/i> points out, legal action by betrayed customers would be unlikely because the information sharing would be secret and not even subject to Freedom of Information Act requests.<\/p>\n

Feinstein said organizations won’t be forced to reveal citizens’ private lives to Uncle Sam: it won’t be mandatory for businesses to hand over people’s private records, she claimed.<\/p>\n

“If you don’t like the bill, you don’t have to do it,” Feinstein said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Oh good. That must mean us little folks get to opt out, right? Right?<\/p>\n

Feinstein continues:<\/p>\n

“So it’s hard for me to understand why we have companies like Apple and Google and Microsoft and others saying they can’t support the bill at this time. You have no reason, because you don’t have to do anything, but there are companies by the hundreds if not thousands that want to participate in this.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Please name those eager thousands, Ms Feinstein. So we can publicize their good citizenship!<\/p>\n

And those companies that don’t “volunteer”? Ms Feinstein’s collaborator Burr has words for them:<\/p>\n

… Burr said on the floor that he couldn’t understand the opposition to CISA. Businesses against the new law will put their users at risk, he said, because by not sharing people’s personal information, they will not be given intelligence and heads up on attacks from the Feds.<\/p>\n

“When the companies who are against this get hacked, they are going to be begging to cooperate with the federal government,” he opined.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So … “volunteer” and the fedgov will help protect your company (while screwing your users). Fail to “volunteer” and you won’t be warned of known security threats to your operation (thus screwing your users). And we’ll soon have you on your knees, begging.<\/p>\n

And no, it’s not too much of a leap to assume that if you fail to “volunteer” to rat on your customers the fedgov’s “security” agencies themselves will become<\/i> that threat to your company’s security.<\/p>\n

—–<\/p>\n

This creepy mess, with all its Randian-Orwellian justifications, is expected to come up for a Senate vote soon. Yes, Mr. Burr, Ms. Feinstein. You just go ahead and hammer that new nail in the coffin of U.S. tech industries. Farewell to their hopes of operating overseas, especially in Europe. Farewell to their brightest U.S. customers.<\/p>\n

It’s hard to believe that even these petty tyrants and the secretive unintelligent agencies that have no doubt put them up to this can be so obsessed with omnivorous information gathering that they’ve blinded themselves to the ruination they’d be wreaking.<\/p>\n

One teeny part of me almost wants to see this bill pass. For their past collaboration with illegal NSA snoopery (known and unknown) the group of companies usually referred to as “the tech giants” deserves the blow that such a law would deliver. Never mind that they’ve so recently found privacy religion.<\/p>\n

Then the better part of me quickly says no, don’t let this happen. Not to anybody.<\/i><\/p>\n

But for cryin’ out loud, if you’re going to do it, at least be honest about what you’re up to.<\/p>\n

Oh. But I forget. They’re politicians. And this is the 21st century where saying what you mean and meaning what you say is strictly for us rubes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I really do. But sometimes the combination of Orwell and Rand becomes too obtrusive to bear. To wit: the CISA blowup. The gloriously bipartisan Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015, sponsored by freedom-loving Republican Richard Burr (NC) and — guess who? — our old friend Dianne Feinstein (D-Control Freak) would “allow” tech companies to “voluntarily” share information about their customers with the federal “security” apparatus “so it can be analyzed for signs of lawbreaking \u2013 be it computer related or not.” Companies that “volunteer” would be given legal immunity against angry customers. But as the linked article in The Register…<\/p>\n

Continue readingI try to avoid thinking about proposed legislation<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,23,25,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural-insanity","category-thuggery-and-bad-law","category-poly-ticks","category-privacy-and-self-ownership","ratio-natural","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23172\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}