Goodbye, Number Four

It's rare for me to make an entry that involves politics. Seriously, take a look at the "Politics" tag - as of April 4, 2013, there are only three entries marked with the aforementioned label, including this one.

Part of it is due to personal ignorance because of my personal view on politicians (where I believe 93+% of them are self-serving idiots sharing loyalties to those willing to financially back them as opposed to the people), while most of it is due to the fact that speaking politics on a personal blog and then posting a link to it on Facebook would only start a flame war that doesn't need to be held.

Nevertheless, whenever I get myself involved, it's because I heard of something so putrid and corrupt that my brain demands me to say my piece about it. Publicly. But what has gotten me repulsed at the government, you ask? Let's find out.

DISCLAIMER:

I, Josh Blanco, do not claim myself to be wholly knowledgeable in the system that we know as politics. Most of my knowledge is rudimentary at best. However, since I as an American operate under a system where I'm (supposedly) free to express myself, I'm therefore allowed to prattle on about anything - even in the complex world of politics.

That being said, there are two things to know:

1. I am accurate to the best of my knowledge. Again, I must stress the importance of "me not being an expert in politics" and what not. I did my fair share of looking things up, but I know that I may be incorrect in a fact or three. Don't be afraid to call me out.
2. These are my opinions and nothing more. I respect most others' opinions so long as they're decently backed up. However, since my stance on this issue will be shown, don't be surprised if I begin referring to the opposition with... colorful names.

Now that that's out of the way, let's figure out what this entry's all about.





I can see a few of you tilting your head at today's entry's title. You're giving this look that essentially translates to "What the frak does 'Number Four' represent?"

Before you ask, it doesn't have anything to do with today being April 4. It doesn't have to do with the fact that April is the fourth month. (This is all pure coincidence, by the way.) It has nothing to do with some random hatred for the number four in general. And no, it doesn't have anything to do with the fourth Cylon model, either. (Minor spoilers for those who've just started watching Battlestar Galactica.)

Anyone recognize what this is? If you're American and you don't, your history teachers must've sucked.

What it does reference is the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution. For those of you who need a refresher (or are just too lazy to click and read the link, the text from that section of the Bill of Rights goes like this:

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.

In common lexicon, this has become known as an American's "right to privacy." The Fourth comes up with issues pertaining to government warrants and (illegal) searches and seizures.

Of course, a lot has changed since the Bill of Rights was ratified in 1790. While the Fourth was originally intended to curb the abuse of writs of assistance back in those days, the times made it clear that these amendments had to somehow apply themselves to the present. Over the past 220+ years, there have been a fair amount of situations where interpretation of this particular amendment became important. While most of these adjustments are fair, there are a few that just seem wrong.



One such case happens to be a current hot point in today's world: the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA). Originally introduced by Michigan Representative Mike Rogers on November 30, 2011 as H.R. 3523, CISPA was created with the overall goal of letting the United States government and various Internet-based companies share mutually beneficial information with one another.

Just what exactly are those cameras looking at?

For some, CISPA may sound familiar. You might recall the "Stop Cyber Spying Week" that rolled out around this time last year. Organizations focusing on civil liberties (such as Reporters Without Borders and the Electronic Frontier Foundation) started a Twitter campaign using hashtags such as "#CongressTMI" and "#CISPA" to bring light to the proposed bill before the House of Representatives began to vote on it.

For the rest of you (whether you're in need of a refresher or if this is your first time hearing about it), CISPA's objective (and its official bill title) is:

To provide for the sharing of certain cyber threat intelligence and cyber threat information between the intelligence community and cybersecurity entities, and for other purposes.

"Other purposes," huh? That was the first thing that caught my eye when I first learned about CISPA last year. The wording seemed so incredibly nebulous and vague that it reminded me of the equally-vague Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) that many people vehemently protested against (myself included).

After reading the whole of CISPA, two opinions formed in my mind. I'd like to share those thoughts with you:

1. Constantly reading pieces of legislature seems like an interesting method of torture.
2. CISPA needs to be killed. AGAIN.

Yes, "AGAIN." While it passed the House of Representatives last April, the Senate let it sit idle and die. While many Internet users thought this to be a good move, we could not rest easy. Like Cylons downloading into new bodies, CISPA came back in an identical body to threaten the Galactica the Internet once more. Rogers reintroduced CISPA to the House of Representatives (switching the bill number to "H.R. 624") on February 13 earlier this year and once again the Internet has taken arms.



I heard that voice in the back. Yeah, you. *points* You're giving me that look that says, "Wait, you're not being fair! Surely there are some good things to this bill that you're not covering!"

This is not how toilet paper is supposed to be used.

Well, here's my response. Sure, there are some decent things. The bill's main objectives are to secure American networks from hackers all over the world. At the same time, the government wishes to allow information to be shared to and from Internet-based businesses and organizations so Uncle Sam can have an easier time investigating cybercrime. As stated in section 2, subsection (c), paragraph 1, this shared data can be used by the government:

'(A) for cybersecurity purposes;

'(B) for the investigation and prosecution of cybersecurity crimes;

'(C) for the protection of individuals from the danger of death or serious bodily harm and the investigation and prosecution of crimes involving such danger of death or serious bodily harm;

'(D) for the protection of minors from child pornography, any risk of sexual exploitation, and serious threats to the physical safety of minors, including kidnapping and trafficking and the investigation and prosecution of crimes involving child pornography, any risk of sexual exploitation, and serious threats to the physical safety of minors, including kidnapping and trafficking, and any crime referred to in section 2258A(a)(2) of title 18, United States Code; or

'(E) to protect the national security of the United States.

- from H.R. 624 § 2(c)(1)

(...I don't know if I cited that correctly. So much for being an English major. *snerks*)

Now that same voice in the back is asking another question at me. "If this sounds like a legit piece of legislature that helps curb cybercrime, then why are you against it, Josh?" Well, lemme tell you.



1.) CISPA's vague wording creates a high potential for loophole exploitation. Namely, CISPA violates the Fourth Amendment.

In other words: various entities can do some very interesting things and protect themselves with CISPA. Confused? Well, here's what I mean.

If CISPA were to pass, Internet organizations and partners will be allowed to sift through anyone's personal data, e-mail, websites - basically any information we place on the web - and look for anything that could remotely look threatening to American cybersecurity. Oh, and they can do all of this without a warrant. And to make things even more fun (for them), they don't have to tell us that they did this. GeekBeat.TV's John Pozadzides put this in layman's terms on his blog so non-legislature geeks such as you and me can understand:

Imagine this scenario: Some employees at AT&T are charged with “cyber-security”. They have access to ALL AT&T customer data, and they set up hundreds of automated searches to just look for keywords or patterns of them, in email going through the system. Those people are going to be reading your email, your wife’s email, your children’s, your neighbor’s, and anyone else they feel like spying on. Then, based on their personal opinion, they’re going to shoot copies of it off to the Feds who are getting it without a warrant, or even probable cause!

Could you hurry? I have some more obscurely incriminating things I'd like no one you'd like to see!

After I read through CISPA's text, I found this hypothetical example to be quite frightening. All of my words I ever placed online - my personal e-mails involving people and their darkest secrets, my Facebook and some of the things I placed on there, those silly pieces of fanfiction I have - if some Internet company employee were to deem my words to even be vaguely threatening to national security, then off it all goes to the government.

While such a personal scenario sounds unlikely, it's quite possible that the government can do this with anyone and everyone in America. There is no need to sift through everything - the government already does that with most everything else. And the worst part is that CISPA blatantly ignores the Fourth. It renders every privacy policy on every website useless and allows Internet workers to snoop through your data "in the interest of national security."

As the world wide web seems to be the last free frontier in the United States, CISPA just seemed like the coffin nail for what little controlled "freedom" we have left. I sound grave, yes... but I don't feel like dying and not saying anything about it. (Sorry for the gallows humor, but I apparently kill people with my puns. I'm dead serious.)



2.) Who supports CISPA? You'd be surprised.

I found a rather disturbing list on this WordPress blog that lists some of the big pro-CISPA organizations out there. Here's some of the companies that seem to like snooping on you and me:

• AT&T: Interprets the bill as promoting "private sector innovation, and protects fundamental American values."
• Facebook: Supports enhancing "the ability of companies like Facebook to address cyber threats" and feels the bill would not make the company share any more of its own data than is currently required.
• IBM: CISPA "would greatly improve the government and private sector’s ability to mitigate cyber threats by enabling better information sharing," Christopher Padilla, vice president, IBM Governmental Programs, wrote on February 13.
• Intel: Combating online threats requires "cooperative efforts of government and NGO stakeholders working together to improve cybersecurity in a way that promotes innovation and protects citizens’ privacy and civil liberties," said Peter M. Cleveland, the company’s director of global policy.
• Time Warner Cable: The telecom giant supports the bill because it wants to protect its 15 million plus customers and feels CISPA enables a "shared responsibility born in partnership by the public and private sectors."
• Verizon: Echoing other support sentiments, the company is pushing for the bill to bridge the private-public sectors and be able to share data to "secure private networks" and protect customers.
• Oracle: Supported last year’s version of the bill, stating that CISPA would remove the legal obstacles inherent in sharing data with the government.
• Symantec: Defending information sharing, the company wrote in 2012 that this tactic is "not an end goal, but rather a situational tool to provide awareness."

Quite interesting, huh?



3.) In regards to CISPA, Congress doesn't seem to care about American opinions all that much.

After CISPA's initial unveiling, civil liberties activists began to shout how loose the interpretations can be and how it's dangerous to the Fourth Amendment. Fortunately, Congress made a few amends, changing the definition of what merits as a cyber-threat and adding supposed penalties for those who improperly use the law.

Despite how those changes sound, they're quite miniscule. The vocal outcry that erupted over CISPA last year apparently failed to reach Rogers and his CISPA supporters, because the differences failed to reach the core problems. Rainey Reitman from the Electronic Frontier Foundation stated the following:

To date, the authors of the bill have been unresponsive to these criticisms, offering amendments that are largely cosmetic. Dismissing the grave concerns about how this bill could undermine the core privacy rights of everyday Internet users, Rep. Mike Rogers characterized the growing protests against CISPA as "turbulence" and vowed to push for a floor vote without radical changes.

That last part sounds typical of an arrogant politician, but in order to check the first part, I took a look at the texts from H.R. 624 (CISPA 2013) and H.R. 3523 (CISPA 2011-2).

LEFT: CISPA 2013 - RIGHT: CISPA 2011-2

Wow. She wasn't kidding. Several grammatical edits, a change in wording to make the whole "combating child pornography" part (somewhat) easier to interpret, and a clarification referencing another vague piece of legislature... those are the changes our leadership made to the bill?

*scoffs*

If you don't believe me, check it out yourself. On the right side of the webpage this link goes to, there's a section you can click to allow a side-by-side comparison of H.R. 624 and H.R. 3523. Tell me if you're impressed with those changes, too.



As I wrote this entry out to vent my frustrations, I took a look back in time and re-read my post that raged against SOPA and PIPA last year. Upon reading it, I realized that I used the same three points (roughly) to back my opinion (I combined 1 and 2 on this entry). While a few may say this is contrived coincidence and unoriginal, I have to ask: does this say anything about the majority of government officials?

How is it that three Internet-based acts legislature are composed with the same skeleton layout: a bunch of vague wording that allows for the convenient violation of Americans' rights in the name of financial and national security? How is it that all the organizations that back these representatives' flawed bills seem to get a higher financial gain should they pass? How is it that these gadzooked flarblenozzers are still allowed to represent the majority of the country when their intentions seem to benefit the people less and less?

*angry sigh*

I should probably calm down now - lest I end up typing something that the government might one day use against be because of my "unpatriotic" comments. But what do I know? I'm just some nobody on the Internet. But if CISPA were to pass, this "nobody" may end up being flagged as a "terrorist" because of some sarcastic comment I made years ago on some obscure personal message on Facebook or something.

So, America, is this what you want? Are you so afraid of the rest of the world stealing business and military information that you'll scan the online personas and data of the honest citizens you're protecting? Are these politicians of yours just so wrapped up in getting more money for their next re-election that they'll support any poorly-written bill so long as they get the most benefits?



Well, if you're prioritizing the eradication of "terrorism" amongst your citizens as opposed to actual terrorism conducted by actual terrorists, then okay. We'll go ahead and continue writing our incriminating entries involving apathy and cream cheese puffs. I'm sure that's code for "FRAK AMERICA." *shakes head*

I know there's at least one person out there asking a question on the lines of "If this is such a big issue for you, then why'd it take you a month to respond to it?" I can say that I'm guilty of not paying attention to the news well enough. However, it could be said that Congress is just trying to do its dirty dealings under the table so the general public doesn't know about it. But that's just me.

Okay, I'm done. I hope this educated you in the event that you didn't know about it. Again, I must stress that I'm no political pundit. As such, the information here is from multiple sites I checked out and interpreted on my own. If anything seems inaccurate, then I apologize. Feel free to voice your concern or comment below.

Until the 'morrow, everyone. 'Til then, I strongly urge you to contact your local representative, sign a petition - do something to help voice opposition to a poorly-designed law that could destroy our rights.