Godfather Politics – 4/19/2013
– Tad Cronn
After two days of debate
this week, the House passed CISPA, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and
Protection Act, by a vote of 288-127, with 18 abstaining. The legislation would
allow the federal government to engage private sector firms — think Google — in
the business of monitoring your emails, postings and user data for nebulous
“threat information” which would then be shared “voluntarily” without need for
any sort of warrant.
The IRS and other federal
agencies already have policies in place stating their belief that they are
allowed to waltz through your data anytime they please, so CISPA seems
primarily crafted to protect the Facebooks, Twitters, Yahoos, Sprints and other
electronic communications businesses from legal reprisals.
All of this data will go
into one big federal system — probably the one built by the National Security
Agency in Salt Lake City
CISPA also would amend the
National Security Act to allow the feds to share classified information with
entities and individuals who do not have a security clearance.
The Fourth Amendment
restricts (or used to restrict) what the federal government can do in criminal
investigations: “THE RIGHT OF THE PEOPLE
TO BE SECURE IN THEIR PERSONS, HOUSES, PAPERS, AND EFFECTS, AGAINST
UNREASONABLE SEARCHES AND SEIZURES, SHALL NOT BE VIOLATED, AND NO WARRANTS
SHALL ISSUE, BUT UPON PROBABLE CAUSE, SUPPORTED BY OATH OR AFFIRMATION, AND
PARTICULARLY DESCRIBING THE PLACE TO BE SEARCHED, AND THE PERSONS OR THINGS TO
BE SEIZED.”
What it does not protect you from is private
companies that you’ve entrusted with your information mining that data for
their own purposes. CISPA lets the feds get around the Fourth Amendment by engaging
private firms and individuals to do their dirty work.
These firms and the
government are allowed under CISPA to cooperate in this data exchange for
purposes of ill-defined “cybersecurity.”
Northwoods Patriots - Standing up for Faith, Family, Country - northwoodspatriotscomm@gmail.com
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