We the People’website cracked the 100,000-signature threshold now White House must respond to 'Stop CISPA' petition.

We the People’website cracked the 100,000-signature threshold now White House must respond to 'Stop CISPA' petition.(RT).A petition on the White House’s ‘We the People’website cracked the 100,000-signature threshold needed to provokean official response this week, and now a member of US PresidentBarack Obama’s staff will have to speak out about the CISPA bill,which was recently reintroduced before American lawmakers.
Up until earlier this year, the White House required petitionsto collect only 25,000 signatures to garner an official response.In a matter of just three weeks, however, an anti-CISPA petitionhas become one of the most popular ones on the site.
Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and Sen. Dutch Ruppersberger(D-Calif.) unveiled CISPA to their Capitol Hill colleagues last year and touted it as a surefire solution to the impending cyber war that lawmakers in Washington — including the Pres. Obama — have repeatedly warned of during his tenure as commander-in-chief. In the wake of protests aimed at other computer bills, such as the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and its sister bill, the Protect IPAct (PIPA), the public response to CISPA was overly negative and it never advanced in the House of Representatives far enough to be voted on before the last congressional season expired. Rogers and Ruppersberger recently reintroduced their failed bill, however, and hope to have it added to the books soon as warnings of a cyberwar with the likes of Iran and China continue to come from Washington’s elite.
The authors of CISPA describe it as a bill “to provide for the sharing of certain cyber threat intelligence and cyber threat information between the intelligence community and cyber security entities,” but critics say it does much more than that. Because it creates an inter-connected system for private businesses and government agencies to share information, privacy advocates say it puts too much personal information into the hands of Uncle Sam.
“CISPA is about information sharing. It creates broad legal exemptions that allow the government to share ‘cyber threat intelligence’ with private companies, and companies to share ‘cyber threat information’ with the government, for the purposes of enhancing cyber security. The problems arise from the definitions of these terms, especially when it comes to companies sharing data with the feds,” reads the Stop CISPA petition that must soon bemet with a response from the White House.
Last month, Pres. Obama signed an executive order that will set up the frameworkfor a cyber-protection system that will serve as a starting-pointfor any eventually CISPA or CISPA-like laws. In doing so, though,he urged Congress to consider Rogers’ and Ruppersberger’ bill.
“I signed a new executive order that will strengthen our cyber defenses by increasing information sharing, and developing standards to protect our national security, our jobs and our privacy. Now, Congress must act as well, by passing legislation to give our government a greater capacity to secure our networks and deter attacks,” the president said.
CISPA has been condemned by the Electronic Frontier Foundation,software developers Mozilla and former Rep. Ron Paul, who called the act “essentially an Internet monitoring bill that permits both the federal government and private companies to view your private online communications with no judicial oversight, provided, of course, that they do so in the name of cyber security.”Hmmm.....He might say well now you need 500,000 signatures.Read the full story here.

Related: 34 Civil Liberties Groups Speak Out Against CISPA in Lead Up to Hearings

Canada-EU Trade Agreement Replicates ACTA’s Notorious Copyright Provisions.

Canada-EU Trade Agreement Replicates ACTA’s Notorious Copyright Provisions.(EFF).By Carolina Rossini.The shadow of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) is back in Europe. It is disguised as CETA, the Canada-European Union and Trade Agreement. As reported by EDRI, a rather strange and surprising e-mail was sent this summer from the General Secretariat of the Council of the European Union to the Member States and the European Commission. The e-mail explained that the criminal sanctions provisions of the draft CETA are modeled on those in ACTA.

A comparison of the leaked draft Canada-EU agreement shows the treaty includes a number of the same controversial provisions, specifically concerning criminal enforcement, private enforcement by Internet Service Providers (ISPs), and harsh damages. These provisions are particularly problematic, and were the key reasons why the European Parliament rejected ACTA.

However, given the lack of transparency associated with the CETA discussions (both Canada and EU insist that the draft text remain secret), the concerns that CETA may replicate ACTA appear to be very real despite denials from some members of the European Commission.

CETA is a trade agreement designed to strengthen economic ties between Canada and the EU through “free” trade and increased investment. However, hidden within this treaty are provisions that were essentially lifted from ACTA word-for-word. And just like its close cousins, ACTA, KORUS, and TPP—and other trade agreements that are applauded by the entertainment industry for carrying expansive intellectual property provisions—CETA is being negotiated in secret.

Jérémie Zimmermann declared:

The only hard evidence on which we can base our analysis suggests the worst: once again, the European Commission and the EU Member States governments are trying to impose repressive measures against cultural practices online. (…) This trend of sneaking repressive measures through negotiated trade agreements must stop.

This cut-and-paste strategy was confirmed yesterday by La Quadrature du Net, which had representatives present in a workshop on October 10th, where Philipp Dupuis, the European Commission negotiator, bragged that ACTA-like criminal sanctions were still in the CETA draft. Following the workshop, La Quadrature du Net sent letters to Mr Pierre Moscovici, Minister for Economic Affairs and Finance, requesting clarifications and demanding that the criminal measures be removed from CETA.

The 92% of the European Union Parliament who voted against ACTA in July 2012 demonstrated that the EU was overwhelmingly against provisions like this, and many expected that it would be the end of the matter. Sadly, that assumption appears to have been unfounded. Despite this there are encouraging signs of resistance—including that the Dutch government has stated that it would not accept CETA moving forward this way.

Civil society, which has mobilized and filled streets of France, Poland, and others, is calling on citizens to demand that their governments remove copyright provisions from CETA during the upcoming round of negotiations next week in Brussels.

The Consolidation of Policy Laundering and Increasing Secrecy in International Negotiations

The copyright lobbies have consolidated on the use of foreign and international forums as an indirect means of pushing policies—a strategy known as policy laundering—like those ones in CETA that might never win direct approval through the regular domestic political. The move from fora like the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) or the World Trade Organization (WTO) to bilateral and regional trade agreements confirms it. Policy laundering takes advantage of the fact that the institutions nations have created for ensuring democratic control and input into the bureaucratic policymaking process have not yet been instituted into most international bodies and negotiation venues. And of course, the entertainment lobby applauds this. It is well known for instance, that provisions of the US DMCA were the result of policy laundering. This should not be the way we build 21st century agreements.

International negotiations are abstract and it’s hard to see how they may eventually affect one's life. When a trade agreement or treaty is signed by a country and later ratified however, it does manifest itself into national law. Therefore, the time to act is from the very beginning of such initiatives, not later. Secrecy around negotiations is not democratic, violates the open government principles many of the negotiating countries have signed onto, and purposefully makes taking action much more difficult.

Secrecy impacts civil society’s ability to comment or analyze agreements, just as it does with the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP) and other FTAs. It’s hard enough to work within the participation system at places like WIPO, but at least there we are given some opportunity to observe and participate in the official discussions. When trade negotiators and copyright maximalists get together to launder IP rights expansion through secret agreements, we lose that small but vital voice that lets us speak truth to power.

Additional Resources:
Europe: La Quadrature du Net: http://www.laquadrature.net/en/CETA
Europe: EDRI http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number10.17/ceta-acta-criminal-sanctions
Canada: Michael Geist blog on ACTA http://www.michaelgeist.ca/index.php?option=com_tags&task=view&tag=acta&Itemid=408

Video - Kim Dotcom attacks Obama with new song "Mr. President"

Video - Kim Dotcom attacks Obama with new song "Mr. President".(RT).Megaupload's Kim Dotcom — the man behind one of the most well-known file sharing sites — has a message for US President Barack Obama: where is your promise to keep the Internet free?
Dotcom, the 38-year-old founder of Megaupload.com, has come forth with his latest attempt to make a splash in the same industry that has employed every tactic in the book to put him behind bars. Even after being targeted by an international witch-hunt spearheaded by the Recording Industry Association of America, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and selected members of the US Congress, Dotcom has dropped a new musical number of his own.
And, of course, Dotcom has made the song available free of charge all over the Internet.
“Mr. President,” a bouncy, 4-minute-long request meant for Washington, was released on Friday, and Dotcom doesn’t hold back in his appeal for Internet freedoms. Dotcom may have been made the poster boy of online piracy thanks to an array of enemies in the RIAA, Hollywood and Capitol Hill, but in his latest number he embraces that allegations that he has facilitated copyright infringement and asks for his fans to demand a chance with the ways the Web is governed.
“The war for the Internet has begun,” Dotcom declares over a simplistic synthesizer lead. “Hollywood is in control of politics / The Government is killing innovation / Don't let them get away with that.”
Dotcom has been a central figure in Washington’s war on online piracy for years now, but a highly publicized raid of his New Zealand mansion on January 20 has propelled him to near-iconic status. The FBI alleges that, by masterminding the operations of Megaupload, Dotcom cost Hollywood upwards of half a billion dollars in lost revenue. Since those allegations were delivered, though, Dotcom has spent six months mostly hulled up in his home, yet still jumping on just about every opportunity to attack America and its justice system.
Only days before “Mr. President” was released, Dotcom’s attorneys filed a rebuttal against the federal prosecutors involved in the copyright case that calls out America’s attorneys for inventing their own rules to try to build up charges against Megaupload, a hugely popular file-storage site that was shut down by the FBI in conjunction with January’s raid.
In his latest tune, Dotcom declares over a redundant German dance beat that, “[I]f we don’t do anything. . . they will just blame it on the copyright,” and that advocates for a free and open Internet need to “Keep this movement going,” “Keep this movement tweeting” and “Keep this movement moving” in order to erode attempts from Congress and other legislative bodies across the world that are running a campaign against online freedoms.
During the course of the song, Dotcom’s compliments the tune’s repetitive dance phrases by combining it with images of protesters from across the globe, frequently donned in the Guy Fawkes mask adopted by the Anonymous movement, to showcase how other advocates have successfully killed ACTA — the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement that aimed to establish new standards for governing intellectual property rights in countries around the globe, including the US, New Zealand, Canada and the European Union. Thanks in part to a massive social media campaign — to which Dotcom encouraged — ACTA was killed just weeks ago.
In a tweet sent earlier this month, Dotcom celebrated the end of ACTA and similar American legislation aimed at regulating the Internet by writing to his followers, “SOPA is dead. PIPA is dead. ACTA is dead. MEGA will return. Bigger. Better. Faster. Free of charge & shielded from attacks. Evolution!”
Elsewhere in the number, Dotcom reaches out directly to President Obama, insisting that the “change” that was promised during his 2008 campaign for the White House turned out to be nothing more than an attempt to bring difference to the Web by way of regulation. “What about free speech, Mr. President?” Dotcom asks. “What happened to change, Mr. President? Are you pleading the fifth, Mr. President? Are you going to fix this, Mr. President?”
Dotcom then deters his lyrical attacks to take aim at the entertainment industry representatives who have largely pushed for SOPA and PIPA, whose clout on Capitol Hill almost cost the rest of the country their Internet freedoms.
“Hollywood marionettes [are] taking over our Internet,” he sings. “Don't let them get away with that.”
Before the song concludes, Dotcom asks his listeners to “Keep sharing this song.”
“If you can't blog – tweet. If you can't tweet – like. But by all means – keep sharing.”

SOPA Being Reintroduced Through Creation of Copyright Commissars.

SOPA Being Reintroduced Through Creation of Copyright Commissars.(AP).By Joe Wright.The battle rages on between lovers of the free Internet and a big government hellbent on controlling the only semblance of a fair and balanced media that still exists.

An onslaught of bills have been introduced worldwide which seek to criminalize the fundamental way that information is freely shared. Among the most comprehensive:

ACTA - Recently struck down by the European Parliament in a 478 to 39 vote after street protests swept across Europe. However, ACTA has already been signed in the United States. ACTA allows accusers of copyright infringement to bypass judicial review. Lack of “due process” makes these bills and ACTA unconstitutional and violates the Magna Carta, a charter signed in 1215 on which most Western law is based, including the US Constitution. (Source)

PIPA - A massive protest in January generated over 7 million petition signatures, which caused the bill to be postponed. Some of the most popular websites on the planet blackened their pages to protest the PROTECT IP Act, (S. 968), which threatens free access to information on the Web by allowing accusers to shut down an entire website - even shared platforms like Twitter, WordPress and YouTube, because of a single copyright violation. (Source)

OPEN - Darrell Issa (CA-R) and 24 co-sponsors introduced H.R. 3782. The bill claims to only target foreign websites for digital trade violations, while keeping Americans free to surf and post, but the bill's wording was wide open to pursue American sites. (Source)

CISPA - The grandaddy of cyber legislation, ushering in fascism to the Internet by giving full control to the Department of Defense and all of its satellite federal agencies and private contractors to surveil and wage cyberwar. (Source)

Resistance has been strong, but Big Brother remains motivated to move in by stealth if necessary, as evidenced by a new related bill that seeks to sneak a previously defeated piece of SOPA past an unsuspecting public.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has been at the forefront of keeping the public informed about the myriad ways that our (s)elected representatives are attempting to usher in tyranny to the free market of ideas known as the World Wide Web.As Adi Kamdar writes:

Even after millions rallied against the passage of SOPA/PIPA, the House is still quietly trying to pass a related bill that would give the entertainment industry more permanent, government-funded spokespeople. The Intellectual Property, Competition, and the Internet Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee recently held a hearing on Lamar Smith's IP Attaché Act (PDF), a bill that increases intellectual property policing around the world. The Act would create an Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property, as well as broaden the use of IP attachés in particular U.S. embassies. (The attachés were notably present in Sec. 205 of SOPA—which was also introduced by Smith.) [Source]

Kamdar rightly states that this empowers Hollywood with "traveling foot soldiers" that become content commissars by virtue of being "IP Attachés." - or world ambassadors for Internet censorship. In so doing, it creates yet another pyramid of control and intimidation that seeks to corral content through the ever-present threat of copyright violations.

So far, private copyright trolls have been repeatedly defeated (here and here for a couple recent examples), as judge after judge has ruled their lawsuits to be completely without merit. However, with this new piece of legislation, the federal government very well could create its own copyright troll goon squad at the behest of establishment lobbyists and their easily bought-and-paid-for congressmen.

Please continue following any mention of Internet regulation no matter how slick the veneer, as the final nail in the coffin of free expression and sharing of information contrary to the establishment media could arrive at any time, cloaked in ways we might not yet suspect.

It is clear that despite overwhelming public outcry, there are those in Congress such as Lamar Smith who clearly serve a different master.Read the full story here.

Microsoft backs away from CISPA support, citing privacy.

Microsoft backs away from CISPA support, citing privacy.(CNet).Microsoft is no longer as enthusiastic about a controversial cybersecurity bill that would allow Internet and telecommunications companies to divulge confidential customer information to the National Security Agency.
The U.S. House of Representatives approved CISPA by a 248 to 168 margin yesterday in spite of a presidential veto threat and warnings from some House members that the measure represented "Big Brother writ large." (See CNET's CISPA FAQ.)
In response to queries from CNET, Microsoft, which has long been viewed as a supporter of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, said this evening that any law must allow "us to honor the privacy and security promises we make to our customers."" Microsoft added that it wants to "ensure the final legislation helps to tackle the real threat of cybercrime while protecting consumer privacy." That's a noticeable change -- albeit not a complete reversal -- from Microsoft's position when CISPA was introduced in November 2011. In a statement (PDF) at the time, Microsoft vice president for government affairs Fred Humphries didn't mention privacy. Instead, Humphries said he wanted to "commend" CISPA's sponsors and "Microsoft applauds their leadership." He added: "This bill is an important first step towards addressing significant problems in cyber security." That wasn't exactly an full-throated endorsement of CISPA, but it was enough for the bill's author, House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), to list Microsoft as a "supporter" on the committee's Web site.
And it was also enough for news organizations, including the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, to list Microsoft as having an unqualified pro-CISPA stand.
To be sure, Microsoft's initial reaction to CISPA came before many of the privacy concerns had been raised. An anti-CISPA coalition letter (PDF) wasn't sent out until April 16, and a petition that garnered nearly 800,000 signatures wasn't set up until April 5.What makes CISPA so controversial is a section saying that, "notwithstanding any other provision of law," companies may share information with Homeland Security, the IRS, the NSA, or other agencies. By including the word "notwithstanding," CISPA's drafters intended to make their legislation trump all existing federal and state laws, including ones dealing with wiretaps, educational records, medical privacy, and more.CISPA would "waive every single privacy law ever enacted in the name of cybersecurity," Rep. Jared Polis, a Colorado Democrat and onetime Web entrepreneur, said during yesterday's floor debate. Its sponsors, on the other hand, say it's necessary to allow the NSA and Homeland Security to share cybersecurity threat information with the private sector.
What Microsoft appears to favor is a Senate bill introduced in February called the Cybersecurity Act.
At a Senate hearing in February, Microsoft vice president Scott Charney was more effusive about the Cybersecurity Act than his colleague was about CISPA three months earlier. The Senate bill provides "an appropriate framework to improve the security of government and critical infrastructure systems," one which will be "flexible enough to permit future improvements to security" over time, Charney said (PDF).
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has been active in an anti-CISPA coalition, welcomed Microsoft's new statement.
"We're excited to hear that Microsoft has acknowledged the serious privacy faults in CISPA," said Dan Auerbach, EFF staff technologist. "We hope that other companies will realize this is bad for users and also bad for companies who may be coerced into sharing information with the government." Read the full story here.

CISPA passes House in unexpected last-minute vote.

CISPA passes House in unexpected last-minute vote.(RT).The House of Representatives has approved Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act with a vote count of 248-168. The bill is now headed for the Senate. President Barack Obama will be able to sign or cancel it pending Senate approval.
Initially slated to vote on the bill Friday, the House of Representatives decided to pass Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) Thursday after approving a number of amendments.
Apart from cyber and national security purposes, the bill would now allow the government to use private information obtained through CISPA for the investigation and prosecution of “cybersecurity crime,” protection of individuals and the protection of children. The new clauses define “cybersecurity crime” as any crime involving network disruption or hacking.
“Basically this means CISPA can no longer be called a cyber security bill at all. The government would be able to search information it collects under CISPA for the purposes of investigating American citizens with complete immunity from all privacy protections as long as they can claim someone committed a 'cybersecurity crime.' Basically it says the Fourth Amendment does not apply online, at all,” Techdirt's Leigh Beadon said.
Declan McCullagh, correspondent from CNET News, says CISPA will cause more trouble than is immediately apparent.
“The most controversial section of CISPA is the language – that notwithstanding any other portion the of law, companies can share what they want as long as it’s for what they call a ‘cyber security purpose,'" he told RT.
The CISPA battleground in numbers
CISPA was introduced in the House last November. Critics chided the bill, saying its broad wording could allow the government to spy on individual Internet users and block websites that publish vaguely defined ‘sensitive’ data.

The White House issued a statement Wednesday saying President Barack Obama would be advised to veto the bill if he receives it. Apparently, Obama will again pose as an opponent by threatening to veto, like he did with NDAA, before signing it under cover of night.The Obama administration denounces the proposed law for potentially giving the government cyber-sleuthing powers that would allow both federal authorities and private businesses to sneak into inboxes and online activities in the name of combating Internet terrorism tactics.Read the full story here.

Video - CISPA Bill Picking Up Sponsors Ahead of Vote Next Week.

Video - Worse than SOPA? CISPA to censor Web in name of cybersecurity.

Worse than SOPA? CISPA to censor Web in name of cybersecurity.(RT).
H.R. 3523, a piece of legislation dubbed the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (or CISPA for short), has been created under the guise of being a necessary implement in America’s war against cyberattacks. But the vague verbiage contained within the pages of the paper could allow Congress to circumvent existing exemptions to online privacy laws and essentially monitor, censor and stop any online communication that it considers disruptive to the government or private parties.
Critics have already come after CISPA for the capabilities that it will give to seemingly any federal entity that claims it is threatened by online interactions, but unlike the Stop Online Privacy Act and the Protect IP Acts that were discarded on the Capitol Building floor after incredibly successful online campaigns to crush them, widespread recognition of what the latest would-be law will do has yet to surface to the same degree. Kendall Burman of the Center for Democracy and Technology tells RT that Congress is currently considering a number of cybersecurity bills that could eventually be voted into law, but for the group that largely advocates an open Internet, she warns that provisions within CISPA are reason to worry over what the realities could be if it ends up on the desk of President Barack Obama.
So far CISPA has been introduced, referred and reported by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and expects to go before a vote in the first half of Congress within the coming weeks. “We have a number of concerns with something like this bill that creates sort of a vast hole in the privacy law to allow government to receive these kinds of information,” explains Burman, who acknowledges that the bill, as written, allows the US government to involve itself into any online correspondence, current exemptions notwithstanding, if it believes there is reason to suspect cyber crime.
As with other authoritarian attempts at censorship that have come through Congress in recent times, of course, the wording within the CISPA allows for the government to interpret the law in such a number of degrees that any online communication or interaction could be suspect and thus unknowingly monitored. In a press release penned last month by the CDT, the group warned then that CISPA allows Internet Service Providers to “funnel private communications and related information back to the government without adequate privacy protections and controls. The bill does not specify which agencies ISPs could disclose customer data to, but the structure and incentives in the bill raise a very real possibility that the National Security Agency or the DOD’s Cybercommand would be the primary recipient,” reads the warning. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, another online advocacy group, has also sharply condemned CISPA for what it means for the future of the Internet. “It effectively creates a ‘cybersecurity'’ exemption to all existing laws,” explains the EFF, who add in a statement of their own that “There are almost no restrictions on what can be collected and how it can be used, provided a company can claim it was motivated by ‘cybersecurity purposes.’” 
What does that mean? Both the EFF and CDT say an awfully lot. Some of the biggest corporations in the country, including service providers such as Google, Facebook, Twitter or AT&T, could copy confidential information and send them off to the Pentagon if pressured, as long as the government believes they have reason to suspect wrongdoing. In a summation of their own, the Congressional Research Service, a nonpartisan arm of the Library of Congress, explains that “efforts to degrade, disrupt or destroy” either “a system or network of a government or private entity” is reason enough for Washington to reach in and read any online communiqué of their choice. The authors of CISPA say the bill has been made “To provide for the sharing of certain cyber threat intelligence and cyber threat information between the intelligence community and cybersecurity entities,” but not before noting that the legislation could be used “and for other purposes,” as well — which, of course, are not defined. “Cyber security, when done right and done narrowly, could benefit everyone,” Burman tells RT. “But it needs to be done in an incremental way with an arrow approach, and the heavy hand that lawmakers are taking with these current bills . . . it brings real serious concerns.”Read the full story here.

March 31: Operation Global Blackout: Anonymous Hackers Intend to Shut Down the Internet by Disabling Core DNS Servers.

March 31: Operation Global Blackout: Anonymous Hackers Intend to Shut Down the Internet by Disabling Core DNS Servers.(SHTF).By Dan Graziano.The hacking group known as Anonymous intends to attack the core servers that control the routing of all internet traffic. DNS, or Domain Name Servers, are a critical backbone of the web and make it possible for internet surfers to reach web site destinations by typing in a domain name in their browsers. Once a particular web site is requested, a query is sent to a domain name server, which then redirects that web address to a specific IP address on the web. Without these servers, access to web sites through traditional means (typing in a ‘dot com’) becomes impossible, because there is no way to direct the traffic to the appropriate web site destination.
According to a statement released by Anonymous, it is these servers that will come under fire on Saturday, March 31. Anonymous says they do not intend to ‘kill’ the internet completely, but rather, the end game of Operation Blackout 2012 is a temporary take down of the internet where “it hurts most.” According to the group, the operation is being carried out to protest SOPA, Wallstreet, our irresponsible leaders and the beloved bankers who are starving the world for their own selfish needs out of sheer sadistic fun, on March 31, anonymous will shut the Internet down,” the group stated last month. “Remember, this is a protest, we are not trying to ‘kill’ the Internet we are only temporarily shutting it down where it hurts the most.” Read the full story here.