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CISA passes Senate

281 points| heimatau | 10 years ago |eff.org

73 comments

order
[+] mikehotel|10 years ago|reply
Interesting votes:

  Nay		  I  	Sanders, Bernie	VT
  No Vote	  R  	Cruz, Ted	TX
  No Vote	  R  	Graham, Lindsey	SC
  No Vote	  R  	Paul, Rand	KY
  No Vote	  R  	Rubio, Marco	FL
Above from GovTrack [1]

Note, the Guardian [2] has Sen. Graham as voting yes. > Democratic presidential contender Bernie Sanders voted against the bill. None of the Republican presidential candidates (except Lindsey Graham, who voted in favor) were present to cast a vote, including Rand Paul, who has made privacy from surveillance a major plank of his campaign platform.

[1] https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/114-2015/s291 [2] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/oct/27/cisa-cybersecur...

[+] tptacek|10 years ago|reply
That kind of makes sense, because the bill cleared its cloture vote with overwhelming support, and if you follow the amendments from the beginning, pretty much everyone seems to have had their fingers in it. There's nothing anyone could have done to change the outcome.
[+] MikeKusold|10 years ago|reply
The tech world badly needs the equivalent of the NRA. We need to routinely be grading politician voting records [1] on privacy focused bills. If a politician votes against privacy, then they should be forced to fear a highly contested re-election.

If it works for guns and the tea-party, then why can't it work for tech?

[1] https://www.nrapvf.org/grades/

[+] jakeogh|10 years ago|reply
The EFF is already the most reliable org fighting for our digital arms. As far as comparison to the NRA, I suggest GOA[1] is a better model. The NRA is only a fair weather friend of the 2nd.

[1] http://www.gunowners.org/114hrat.htm

[+] rayiner|10 years ago|reply
> If it works for guns and the tea-party, then why can't it work for tech?

Because a viable critical mass of people are willing to be single-issue voters when it comes to guns. And that's the case because gun ownership is deeply ingrained into the culture of many parts of the country.

Neither is true for electronic privacy.

[+] mmanfrin|10 years ago|reply
I've, for the past couple years, had an idea for a PAC specifically for tech issues. The PAC would also monitor and rate politicians stances on tech issues (I have a list of stances that would be part of the mission: net neutrality, privacy protections, data portability, and a few others). I've just never pushed very far with it.
[+] dragonwriter|10 years ago|reply
> The tech world badly needs the equivalent of the NRA.

The NRA -- as a lobbying organization -- is a single-issue lobbying organization with an incredibly straightforward mission.

"The tech world" isn't an issue like "gun rights", and can't support an NRA-like organization. A more specific privacy-oriented viewpoint with the kind of simplicity and clarity that the NRA's mission has might -- but it would have only limited correlation to the "tech world" in its support.

[+] brianmurphy|10 years ago|reply
Please don't conflate tech and privacy. From a tech perspective, there are very useful and interesting public safety projects that can come from interdepartmental data.
[+] rhino369|10 years ago|reply
>privacy focused bills

How much tech revenue depends on spying on people and then selling advertisements? I have no idea, but it seems like a lot.

[+] smegger001|10 years ago|reply
You mean like the EFF...
[+] vezzy-fnord|10 years ago|reply
Go even further and be a GOA, perhaps in addition to an NRA equivalent just to push the Overton window.
[+] nickbauman|10 years ago|reply
The NRA's power comes from its perfect political triangularity with a certain, vital voting bloc. There is no equivalent for digital rights.
[+] dominotw|10 years ago|reply
Because ordinary voters care about "safety" than privacy.
[+] unknown|10 years ago|reply

[deleted]

[+] nickpsecurity|10 years ago|reply
EFF isn't getting it: powerful and rich people want this bill to pass for increased government surveillance, control, financial contracts, and bribes. It's probably that simple. They didn't make a mistake any more than they accidentally give the Pentagon or defence contractors ridiculous sums of money for useless stuff that just keeps people employed in their districts, their stock portfolios in the black, and their campaign funds full. This is part of systematic corruption. They just don't give a shit, they have incentives not to, and agencies promise them an exemption which they believe. (Wait, there's the mistake.)

Aside from huge voter push, the only thing that could change it would be similar money and power pushing in the opposite direction. Not talk, not lawyers, not faxes: one or more groups paying for and demanding curtailing of mass surveillance with ability to disrupt contracts, bills, or the politician's careers. Right now, only the pro-surveillance people are in that position. So, they're winning and will keep winning until people get how the system really works and make it work for them.

[+] Umn55|10 years ago|reply
Goes way beyond that...

On the NSA/spying...

The (mass surveillance) by the NSA and abuse by law enforcement is just more part and parcel of state suppression of dissent against corporate interests. They're worried that the more people are going to wake up and corporate centers like the US and canada may be among those who also awaken. See this vid with Zbigniew Brzezinski, former United States National Security Advisor.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7ZyJw_cHJY

Brezinski at a press conference

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VWTIZBCQ79g

[+] stevecalifornia|10 years ago|reply
Here is my problem with EFF: They are raising a stink and not providing any cited evidence. In Wikipedia terms-- [citation needed]. Take any article published by them and count how many links deep you have to get to any actual information and not just general opinion. I still haven't found anything that goes through the bill and explains what the problem is citing the text of the bill.

This is an actual opening sentence from some material the EFF published: "Although grassroots activism has dealt it a blow, the Senate Intelligence Committee's terrible bill, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing Act(CISA) keeps shambling along like the zombie it is." It's hard for me to get behind an organization that writes like this.

What I dislike about all the crazy right-wing emails I get is it's all inflated scare mongering and no actual sourcing. The EFF's publications are getting way too similar and it saddens me.

Now, on the flip side, I have yet to see the authors of this bill really put out much material that relates the bill in simpler terms. For that, I am also saddened.

[+] atomi|10 years ago|reply
Enormous multi-national corporations should not function as an extension of our Government. This is the separation of church and state debate all over again.
[+] adventured|10 years ago|reply
Sure, the US needs a separation of state and economy for the same exact reason and state and church - any mingling generates intense, dangerous corruption. You'll never see that separation however, because 2/3+ of the political class are heavy statists that like to accumulate perpetually greater amounts of power - and to accumulate power, you must have control over the economy.
[+] msellout|10 years ago|reply
I think you've got it backwards. For the last 200 years, the government has mostly functioned as an extension of wealthy people/corporations. Heck, the revolutionaries of the Boston Tea Party were upset that legally imported British tea was cheaper than the colonists' smuggled Dutch tea. The USA was founded by merchants trying to avoid competition.
[+] Umn55|10 years ago|reply
"Enormous multi-national corporations should not function as an extension of our Government"

You've demonstrated you're completely historically illiterate. It has always been thus, you're just becoming aware of it.

From war is a racket:

"I helped make Mexico, especially Tampico, safe for American oil intersts in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefits of Wall Street. The record of racketeering is long. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. In China I helped to see to it that Standard Oil went its way unmolested."[p. 10]

"War is a racket. ...It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives." [p. 23]

"The general public shoulders the bill [for war]. This bill renders a horrible accounting. Newly placed gravestones. Mangled bodies. Shattered minds. Broken hearts and homes. Economic instability. Depression and all its attendant miseries. Back-breaking taxation for generations and generations." [p. 24]

General Butler is especially trenchant when he looks at post-war casualties. He writes with great emotion about the thousands of tramautized soldiers, many of who lose their minds and are penned like animals until they die, and he notes that in his time, returning veterans are three times more likely to die prematurely than those who stayed home.

http://www.amazon.com/War-Racket-Antiwar-Americas-Decorated/...

US distribution of wealth

https://imgur.com/a/FShfb

http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html

The Centre for Investigative Journalism

http://www.tcij.org/

Some history on US imperialism by us corporations.

https://kurukshetra1.wordpress.com/2015/09/27/a-brief-histor...

[+] givan|10 years ago|reply
What is the bigger picture here, what is really happening?

Europe also wants to regulate internet traffic, at the same time an internet law is passed and both us and europe want a broader commerce union with TIPP.

Are all these tools implemented to eventually censor people who will disagree with all that is coming with this new union? something like china does with everything that is against the party? what are they trying to do to our society with these baby steps?

[+] mikehotel|10 years ago|reply
Does the final version produced by the conference committee require revotes in the House and Senate again before heading to the President for signature?

The gap between US lawmakers and the EU is only widening when it comes to Privacy matters. This vote only lends more credence to the EU's decision earlier this month to scrap Safe Harbor [1].

[1] https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2015/10/european_cour...

[+] dragonwriter|10 years ago|reply
> Does the final version produced by the conference committee require revotes in the House and Senate again before heading to the President for signature?

Yes. The House and Senate must actually pass the same bill, not merely similar bills.

[+] aaronmhatch|10 years ago|reply
What impact did Facebook's lobbying have on this?
[+] hamai|10 years ago|reply
Wonder if TPPA and CISA are related somehow.
[+] Amorymeltzer|10 years ago|reply
The final bill passed with a resounding 74-21 (https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/114-2015/s291). Here's the list of people who voted for it:

D Bennet, Michael CO

D Blumenthal, Richard CT

D Boxer, Barbara CA

D Cantwell, Maria WA

D Carper, Thomas DE

D Casey, Bob PA

D Donnelly, Joe IN

D Durbin, Richard IL

D Feinstein, Dianne CA

D Gillibrand, Kirsten NY

D Heinrich, Martin NM

D Heitkamp, Heidi ND

D Hirono, Mazie HI

D Kaine, Timothy VA

D Klobuchar, Amy MN

D Manchin, Joe WV

D McCaskill, Claire MO

D Mikulski, Barbara MD

D Murphy, Christopher CT

D Murray, Patty WA

D Nelson, Bill FL

D Peters, Gary MI

D Reed, John RI

D Reid, Harry NV

D Schatz, Brian HI

D Schumer, Chuck NY

D Shaheen, Jeanne NH

D Stabenow, Debbie MI

D Warner, Mark VA

D Whitehouse, Sheldon RI

I King, Angus ME

R Alexander, Lamar TN

R Ayotte, Kelly NH

R Barrasso, John WY

R Blunt, Roy MO

R Boozman, John AR

R Burr, Richard NC

R Capito, Shelley WV

R Cassidy, Bill LA

R Coats, Daniel IN

R Cochran, Thad MS

R Collins, Susan ME

R Corker, Bob TN

R Cornyn, John TX

R Cotton, Tom AR

R Enzi, Michael WY

R Ernst, Joni IA

R Fischer, Deb NE

R Flake, Jeff AZ

R Gardner, Cory CO

R Grassley, Chuck IA

R Hatch, Orrin UT

R Hoeven, John ND

R Inhofe, Jim OK

R Isakson, John GA

R Johnson, Ron WI

R Kirk, Mark IL

R Lankford, James OK

R McCain, John AZ

R McConnell, Mitch KY

R Moran, Jerry KS

R Murkowski, Lisa AK

R Perdue, David GA

R Portman, Rob OH

R Roberts, Pat KS

R Rounds, Mike SD

R Sasse, Benjamin NE

R Scott, Tim SC

R Sessions, Jeff AL

R Shelby, Richard AL

R Thune, John SD

R Tillis, Thom NC

R Toomey, Pat PA

R Wicker, Roger MS

[+] Zelphyr|10 years ago|reply
Both of my Senators had been previously flagged as being against this bill yet they voted for it. So they lied to someone.

How... expected.

[+] meatysnapper|10 years ago|reply
both senators from both WA and CA, which are the tech-heavy stastes. No good!
[+] benevol|10 years ago|reply
That's 1 more call for consumers not to use US companies for IT/Web related matters.
[+] beedogs|10 years ago|reply
Considering the US is also tapping every cable leading out of the country, where do you suggest folks take their business?
[+] Shivetya|10 years ago|reply
and this is why people should cheer when Democrats and Republicans cannot agree on how to run the government instead of buying into the line that divisiveness is bad.

because when they get along we lose.

[+] mtgx|10 years ago|reply
We need to raise hell on all of those politicians including the White House months from now, when there will inevitably be another breach where tens of millions of people's data is hacked and their beloved CISA didn't stop it.

Shame them into admitting it's not only a useless, but harmful law, and force them to repeal it.