Congress has added CISA to the federal budget bill

http://www.theverge.com/2015/12/16/10288182/cisa-surveillance-cyber-security-budget-proposal

by fisherjeff • 11 years ago

580 121 11 years ago

theverge.com

MrQuincle• 11 years ago

Welcome to the rest of the world. We're being eavesdropped legally by your congress for ages. :-)

j_s• 11 years ago

Any specifics on which congress-people are responsible for this?

flubert• 11 years ago

In the larger sense, aren't all the representatives responsible? Certainly the ones who voted for it. I know it is controversial, but they should be reading the bills before passing legislation. And the ones who didn't vote? What are we paying you for, if you aren't even showing up for your job? And even those who may have voted no seen to bear some responsibility, why didn't you raise an alarm? You should still be reading bills that have a high likely hodd of passing, even if your intention is to vote no.

ChuckMcM• 11 years ago

Of course, but some representative made the motion to include the text of the CISA bill part of the Omnibus bill, that should be on the record somewhere.

Shivetya• 11 years ago

likely go find the committee it came from, however this bill is being crafted with the President's blessing. don't think the Democrats in Congress agree to anything that he doesn't. There may be times where you can "see that one didn't" but its the same on both aisles, when the bet is sure they can afford to allow members who need a boost back home to "act" defiant.

otherwise, the establishment gets what the establishment wants. Keep voting those incumbents back in and it will always be so. Hence one reason why the Republican Presidential side of the race is so interesting, those who aren't the system or are seen as bucking it are front and center. Sadly Bernie was quickly pushed to the side as there was never going to be a choice there

ccvannorman3• 11 years ago

News flash, privacy is going to (keep) getting worse before it grts better. This is why the instant someone invents a totally secure and private way for me to exist online, I'm going to dump a truckload of money down their coffers.

ljk• 11 years ago

This is why the instant someone invents a totally secure and private way for me to exist online

isn't that impossible due to all the backdoors in software, hardware, and even in the encryption?

akerro• 11 years ago

Are you watching the watchers? What if they didn't implement the backdoors?

mtgx• 11 years ago

News flash, privacy is going to (keep) getting worse before it grts better.

If by that you're saying we should just "wait it out" until it gets worse, then I'm not sure I agree. Unless you're expecting the US to go through a totalitarian regime and then through a revolution in the future, then I doubt it's going to "get better" if people don't try to fight these changes hard at all steps.

As the surveillance people get more power it's only going to become easier for them to pass new changes like these. It's also going to get easier for them to ban good encryption in popular services, as well as open source projects that are "aiding the terrorists" (or whatever their excuse will be).

It really doesn't matter how "silly" you think such excuses will be, if by then the judges can be compelled to agree with them. In fact, by then, you'd be lucky if the majority of the brainwashed population by the controlled mass media will even agree with you that such excuses are "silly", as they would most likely believe them. Just look at plenty of other countries around the world for such examples. I mean half of the US population probably still believes Snowden cooperated with Russia or is a Russian spy, thanks to the denigration campaign against him. Heck, 20% of HN probably believes that.

profeta• 11 years ago

and the people that did that will go largely unpunished in any way and continue to receive the same votes as always.

CM30• 11 years ago

Probably a silly question, but is there a reason all these 'additions' are being snuck into bills and what not? Why does the system allow members of congress to add unrelated extras to bills in the first place?

Wouldn't a simple fix for things like this be 'only allow a new law proposal to be about a single topic and nothing else'?

uremog• 11 years ago

It's common because politics often works like that and nothing disallows it. "I'll vote for your [x] if you vote for my [y]". I definitely dislike it but just saying, sometimes that's why.

lukeschlather2• 11 years ago

What you're suggesting is essentially banning formal expressions of compromise. Compromise is essential for legislation to get made.

EvanAnderson2• 11 years ago

Compromise is essential for legislation to happen, but I also don't think riders really are a form of compromise. It's an underhanded tactic.

chishaku2• 11 years ago

What passes as a "single topic?"

Often, "additions" are included in these last-second, "must sign" bills because they face resistance and are unlikely to pass on their own. No representative, nor the president want to be responsible for a "government shutdown" so anything that makes it into the last version of the bill is likely to become law.

nargella• 11 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rider_(legislation)

Riders are a terrible idea. This wiki does a good job at describing them and illustrating that other countries don't like the idea either.

ashark• 11 years ago

Wouldn't a simple fix for things like this be 'only allow a new law proposal to be about a single topic and nothing else'?

Define "topic" in a way that still lets legislators write useful laws while unequivocally disallowing the kind of thing you want to try to ban, and you can probably get published in a major poli-sci or philosophy journal.

harshreality• 11 years ago

The perfect is the enemy of the good.

We can start with this HN thread's subject, which is a budget bill. Can we at least agree that budgets should not touch the U.S. Code? That they should be simply allocating money from the treasury to various programs and agencies previously specified by law?

dragonwriter7• 11 years ago

Wouldn't a simple fix for things like this be 'only allow a new law proposal to be about a single topic and nothing else'

Single-subject rules are adopted in many state, and they are neither complete solutions (viewing substantive subject-mixing as a problem), nor without their own potential problems. (And, anyway, to actually be mandatory, for Congress such a rule would have to be adopted through Constitutional amendment.)

Further, its quite arguable that substantive subject mixing is not a problem, poor representation is, and trying to limit substantive subject mixing just creates a new problem; where reps are effectively representing the interests of their district, why shouldn't they be able to effectively legislate based on considerations like:

1. X, considered alone, is better for those I represent, on balance, than not-X, and should be supported, and

2. Y, considered alone, is worse for those I represent, on balance, than not-Y, and should be opposed, but

3. X with Y, considered together, is better for those I represent than not-X with not-Y, thus, the combination of X and Y should be supported if X cannot be secured alone.

(While other representatives, with different constituents with different interests, see the same thing, but with X and Y reversed?)

If you could effectively prohibit subject mixing, that would prohibit compromises that are net gains for larger groups, even if smaller gains for the most-favored groups.

(Systems with parliamentary government with explicit coalition building essentially do massive subject mixing up-front in deciding the agenda of the coalition government when it is formed, and thus can avoid the need to do subject mixing when it comes to individual bills; the U.S. system works more on ad hoc coalition building, so the compromises are more on individual bills than anything analogous to the formation of a government in a parliamentary system.)

anonymfus• 11 years ago

Then let's they first vote whether they want to mix X and Y, and then use ranked voting for deciding between 4 variants (X alone, Y alone, X and Y together, nothing).

the_watcher2• 11 years ago

I actually prefer a solution that limits the length of individual bills. Want to pass a sweeping law change? Do it in parts, so no one can claim they missed it.

makewavesnotwar• 11 years ago

So I'm late to the party but I'd say this doesn't really apply to this or similar controversial situations that CM30 solution aims to fix.

On budgetary matters, sure. You want to combine efforts to get legislation through that benefits your constituency even if it's a lot more costly than it would be if you could get your measure approved by itself. An example would be Congressman A has a bunch of people complaining about the all the dangerous intersections in their state, Congressman B has a bunch of bridges that are falling apart, so the two get together and create a Federal Road Improvements Act or whatever to appropriate budget for what is now being considered a nation concern. This is a logical place for riders as it allows federal budgeting to have the greatest reach it can for helping the states.

There is substantially less logical argument when the riders concern law. From your example, if a law ever put a congressman's constituency worse off than they were before, there is no time when that representative should support it. Creating an environment of sweeping bad law into bills set to pass is inherently dangerous because once in place, laws are considered correct until properly invalidated.

But the nature of these riders is different still. This is law being thrown into budget. Just like the super controversial sections in the 2012 NDAA, these are mixing two very different types of bills. Having law riders is dangerous enough as it is, but allowing them to be thrown into budgetary bills that must pass is just insane.

The problem is there is currently no delineation in congress between the two types of bills. Everything they do whether budgetary or policy based is law and is generally "over the head of us simple minded folk" so they have leveraged a tremendous amount of freedom in the way that they can push things through regardless of how much sense anything they do ultimately makes.

I think the first-step solution would be to separate bill types and only allow appropriation riders on budgetary matters and no riders when it comes to new law/policy. If that is too complicated for them, they shouldn't be law makers.

EvanAnderson2• 11 years ago

The "fix" for riders, in the past, has been the line-item veto (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line-item_veto_in_the_United_S...), which allows the president to veto parts of legislation.

It was passed in 1996, challenged, then struck down as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1998.

dragonwriter7• 11 years ago

The line item veto, which purported to allow a kind-of, sort-of veto on spending items in budget bills was never (even had it been Constitutional) a solution to policy riders (whether on budget bills or otherwise.)

JoshTriplett2• 11 years ago

The most obvious problem with the line-item veto is that some things should stay together, such as a new program and the funding to pay for that program, or the repeal of one tax and the institution of another tax to replace it.

WildUtah• 11 years ago

Before the 1974 Congressional Budget Act [0], it had been the law for 185 years that the president could simply refuse to spend money Congress had appropriated. He could hold back the cash even if he did spend other funds appropriated in the same law. That was the original line item veto.

Then Nixon tried to exercise his power to target specific projects and congressmen with an aggressive rescission project and Congress changed the system.

The current federal budget process was instituted in that law where Congress first authorizes all plausible spending and then appropriates only a smaller amount dedicated to specific programs and the president must spend that exact amount by law.

Congress tried to compromise between the two systems with a line item veto managed by Congress in 1996. The courts weren't ready to let the executive and legislature share spending power, especially when they were likely to be the referees and the post-1974 system persists.

Or, it persisted until about 1996. In recent years -- including all of the Obama presidency and the latter Bush years -- the Congressional budget process hasn't produced regular appropriations bills and has delivered only irregular authorizations. The process is supposed to produce at least twelve openly debated appropriations bills every year with participation by all of Congress. Instead a new system of continuing resolutions that limit all spending power to the president and the Senate majority leader and the House speaker in secret conferences has taken hold.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congressional_Budget_and_Impou...

Kalium5• 11 years ago

Wouldn't a simple fix for things like this be 'only allow a new law proposal to be about a single topic and nothing else'?

How do you define "a single topic"? Who gets to decide what is and isn't topical? Who gets to enforce it? Can you see how this definition might be abused for political gain?

Myself, I see it only making things worse.

mhurron• 11 years ago

How do you define "a single topic"?

The original bill. As in, no riders at all.

SapphireSun• 11 years ago

Seems like it would fall to the judicial branch to decide if something is topical or not if it was that contested. However, that would lead to accusations of the judiciary being involved in making the law, though their power would be limited to splitting bills into smaller bills.

Someone1234• 11 years ago

Myself, I see it only making things worse.

How?

Unless you can show how it could make the situation actually worse, your argument doesn't hold.

It would at least be "as bad as now" or better.

ars• 11 years ago

How do you define "a single topic"? Who gets to decide what is and isn't topical?

Easy. If 1/3 of Congress votes for something to be split, then it's split. (Kind of the opposite of the 2/3 super majority rule.)

As simple as that. Let the people actually voting decide if something is a single topic.

Yes, this could lead to nonsense where people split things to insane levels just to disrupt things, but I suspect it would not come to that because they would be ridiculed, and it would be just a waste of time for them since splitting something doesn't mean it doesn't get voted on in the end.

mjevans• 11 years ago

I think that a 'bill' should have a statement (which is not actual 'law') that clearly records the intended effects of the 'bill'. This could be seen as an executive summary.

The contents of the bill that are actually the changes to the code of law would prescribe how that effect is to occur. I would also like to see bills define, in law, how they are funded (even if that is, 'this is funded from a general fund').

I think that the above should be true for every level of governance. The bill should be rejected (patch refused), in it's entirety, if any material not 'directly' related to the intended purpose of the bill is within it, or if it conflicts with existing law in a way that is not corrected by the bill's application to the law. This is what the legal system in a given jurisdiction should do. All law would automatically be reviewed for correctness and compatibility.

spinlock• 11 years ago

You know COBRA? That law that says you can buy insurance through your former employer after you leave the company. You know what COBRA stands for?

Combined Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act

Stuffing projects into the budget happens all the time. Basically, no one will negotiate in good faith on the merits of individual proposals so they play these tricks to get things passed into law.

LastZactionHero• 11 years ago

Wow, thanks, I was thinking about COBRA yesterday and wondering what or stood for.

Definitely not what I came up with...

pjungwir• 11 years ago

I like to think one of my better skills as a developer is asking a lot of dumb questions, and one rule in particular is to always ask what new acronyms stand for. Sounds like it wouldn't help me much in government. . . . :-)

snowwrestler2• 11 years ago

Congress has broad authority to make the law the way they see fit. A lot of what we think of as the "normal" way to pass laws, are just traditions and rules that Congress sets for itself.

Those traditions and rules are good, which is why they exist in the first place. But they're not really binding or legally required.

Which, if you think about it, makes sense. Congress is the ultimate lawmaking authority in the land--who is going to tell Congress what they can't do? The only answers are the Constitution and the voters. The Constitution sets some limits on powers, but doesn't micromanage process. And the voters tend to care about issues, not process.

For CISA specifically, it had already passed both houses; adding it to the omnibus does not accomplish anything that was not already going to happen anyway. The text changes that tptacek details so thoroughly are the sorts of things that could easily happen in conference committee. Sticking it into the omnibus is mostly a matter of convenience at this point.

In the end, Congressional leaders negotiated the omnibus, will allow it on the floor, and the full Congress will vote on it. This is the same bar than any piece of legislation must get over on its own.

And there were nasty bills that did not make it into the omnibus, like de-funding Planned Parenthood.

abannin• 11 years ago

There is a significant difference between bundling a bill into a high stakes omnibus such as the budget and passing it individually. It's much easier to stand up and say "I voted against a single bill" then "I voted against the budget and shut down the government". It's a strong arm negotiation tactic to force members to vote against their position on a less important issue. This is the same reason that so much pork gets thrown into the large bills.

joering2• 11 years ago

I +1 you because it was educational to me, but I'm seriously asking: why you said "nasty" bills like de-funding PP ?

edit: tpacek, Im not asking him in terms of his own opinion, but rather what "nasty" he found in those bills.

His post was very informative that's why I asked. I couldn't care less what he thinks about the subject of PP.

oldmanjay• 11 years ago

Those traditions and rules are good, which is why they exist in the first place.

This is unsupported by evidence or reason.

bsder• 11 years ago

The "simple fix" is the line-item veto.

the_watcher2• 11 years ago

Yes, that would be a simple fix. Unfortunately, this is such an effective way to sneak favors into bills (things like funding for a local initiative in the home district for a politician who voted for a previous bill) that lawmakers love it, so it's here to stay.

imglorp• 11 years ago

"So this is how liberty dies...with thunderous applause."

dang• 11 years ago

There have been close to a dozen posts about this. We merged the threads that had comments.

If another article is significantly more substantive, let us know and we can change the URL.

ck2• 11 years ago

I don't know the origin of the word "scumbags" but it seems to fit perfectly here.

Can you imagine sitting across from someone you are negotiating with and you are about to sign and they slip a sheet of paper inbetween the document, making you agree to it?

Of course not. But what you'd never do to a fellow american in person, congress is more than okay with doing to you without you being there or realizing what is going on.

Lowest of the low.

delecti• 11 years ago

In addition to it's modern usage, which I agree appropriately describes these congresspeople, the word "scumbag" refers to condoms.

AnimalMuppet• 11 years ago

More specifically, to used ones.

disposition2• 11 years ago

Looks like it is actually worse than CISA...

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151215/06470133083/congr...

tptacek12• 11 years ago

Someone asked me about this last night. Is there sourcing for this beyond "Techdirt says so"? Because on matters of law, Techdirt is extraordinarily untrustworthy.

I'd love to see the amendments or revisions that are purported to be doing this to the bill.

(I don't support CISA, but if you asked me which I'd rather get rid of, CISA or Techdirt, I'd have to think about it.)

update:

No. See: https://news.ycombinator.com/edit?id=10747359

yuhong• 11 years ago

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151216/05514933094/as-pr... has an embedded document and a link.

vdfs• 11 years ago

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/lawmakers-have-snuck-cisa-i...

morninj• 11 years ago

(I don't support CISA, but if you asked me which I'd rather get rid of, CISA or Techdirt, I'd have to think about it.)

Why? Techdirt often has great coverage of tech policy issues.

newman314• 11 years ago

So can someone please help explain to me how this is permissible?

Taking this to extremes, why would politicians not sneak every crazy wild idea that they have onto this bill if it's a must-pass bill?

mod• 11 years ago

They do that all the time.

That's why I'm a professional developer these days, instead of a professional poker player.

dragonwriter7• 11 years ago

Taking this to extremes, why would politicians not sneak every crazy wild idea that they have onto this bill if it's a must-pass bill?

They try; there are various constraints:

(1) Individual members can't just stick a rider onto a bill, riders are amendments, and are voted on.

(2) Riders are, in effect, a strong-arm negotiation tactic between one house of Congress and the other, or between Congress and the executive -- a gamble that the other side sees the other provisions of the bill as "must pass" enough to accept the added conditions. But those gambles can be wrong, resulting in neither the main bill or the added provision getting passed. So, the biggest incentive to add non-germane riders is to a bill you are less concerned with passing than those you are trying to get to accept the rider as a precondition for the rest of the bill, where them rejecting the rider is more unattractive to them that it is to you. If you really think its a "must pass" bill (rather than just wanting others to think that so that they'll accept the rider), you won't want to risk causing it to fail somewhere in the process because the rider you attached was unacceptable.

retbull• 11 years ago

Unless you want the political fodder to say the other party is also willing to shut the government down. If you don't care about shutting everything down you can put horrible things in a must pass bill.

TallGuyShort• 11 years ago

That absolutely happens all the time. In a less scum-baggy case, the Republicans recently denied a healthcare bill for 9/11 first-responders citing high cost, and the Democrats' rather non-chalant response was to the effect of, "nah it's okay - we'll just throw it in the budget bill". It's the norm.

DanielBMarkham• 11 years ago

As I understand it, by slipping it in on an Omnibus budget bill, leaders get to add in bullshit that nobody in their right mind could defend on the floor and then expect an up-down, yes-no vote on the entire budget, including the add-in, by the membership.

In addition, because it's a budget bill, regular conference committee rules don't apply. The idea was that having conference committees dicker over each line item would be a great way to prevent both houses from agreeing. So the "fix" they made for money bills can be used for cyber-surveillance bills too.

I may have missed the details. Apologies if that's the case. If this was added to the Omnibus, the reason why was obscurity. My misunderstanding of the details is a prime example of voters not being able to track who's responsible. That's the point.

Zikes• 11 years ago

So now they're legally allowed to do what they've already been doing without oversight anyways, which they were legally never allowed to do in the first place and still aren't legally allowed to do due to Constitutional restraints.

I don't like to sound defeatist, but honestly what does this change?

tmaly• 11 years ago

it would be great if we could have all these bill changes in a git repo with commits from the representatives that added them. open source gov.

fapjacks• 11 years ago

But then they could be held accountable for their shitty actions, and if there's one thing they don't want, it's that!

ionforce2• 11 years ago

There should be an automatic ban against anyone who attempts to shirk responsibility.

jlev• 11 years ago

It's almost as if we need a "Congressional Versioning System" rimshot.

At least we're finally getting open bill status data as XML, without having to rely on GovTrack scraping the Federal Register.

JoshTriplett2• 11 years ago

It's almost as if we need a "Congressional Versioning System" rimshot.

Or a Government Information Tracker.

beatpanda2• 11 years ago

This exists, it's at opencongress.org

micwawa2• 11 years ago

So if I delete my YikYak account today will I still be employable in the future?

an0nym1ty• 11 years ago

I don't understand the connection here. Could you elaborate for me?

micwawa2• 11 years ago

The article says "The bill would make it easier for private sector companies to share user information with ... other companies". Taking this at face value, any potential employer could conceivably access everything I've ever said on YikYak, just, to you know, compare with their own notes and make sure I'm not a criminal. This wasn't really supposed to be that serious of a comment, as haven't said anything too horrible.

tptacek12• 11 years ago

Since it's linked upthread: Techdirt is one of the least trustworthy sources on the Internet for information about Internet law.

(Here's a summary of CISA I wrote a few months ago on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10454172 )

Today (and yesterday), Techdirt claims the following changes to CISA:

1. Removes the prohibition on information being shared with the NSA, allowing it to be shared directly with NSA (and DOD), rather than first having to go through DHS.

2. Directly removes the restrictions on using this information for "surveillance" activities.

3. Removes limitations that government can only use this information for cybersecurity purposes and allows it to be used to go after any other criminal activity as well.

4. Removes the requirement to "scrub" personal information unrelated to a cybersecurity threat before sharing that information.

'yuhong helpfully posted a link to the revised bill attached to the budget bill.[1] I compared it clause for clause to the version that passed the house. That is 10 minutes of my life I will never get back. Unsurprisingly, only one of Techdirt's claims is true (but worded misleadingly). The other three are simply false.

Here's the breakdown:

<strike>1. The "CERTIFICATION OF CAPABILITY AND PROCESS" part of Section 107 now allows the President, after CISA has been started by DHS, and after publicly notifying Congress, to delegate to any federal agency, including NSA, the authority to run the process described by the rest of the bill. The previous version required DHS to run the entire process. Techdirt isn't wrong about that change. Techdirt is wrong to be confused about why NSA would be a designated coordinator for threat indicators under CISA (NSA houses virtually all of the USG's threat intelligence capability; no other department has comparable expertise coordinating vulnerability information).</strike>

I was wrong about this; the new bill specifically disallows DoD or NSA from running the CISA portal.

2. The bill doesn't change the authorized usage of cyber threat indicators at all (nor does it change any of the definitions of threat indicators, vulnerabilities, and so on). The few places I found changes at all actually improved the bill (for instance: Section 105 5(A) no longer allows threat indicators to be shared to investigate "foreign adversaries").

3. CISA has always allowed the USG to use cyber threat information in law enforcement pertaining to a specific list of crimes --- that is one of the ways CISA is significantly worse than CISPA. But Techdirt suggests that CISA can be used by the DEA to investigate drug crimes. You cannot have read the bill and believe that to be an illustrative example, because drug crimes aren't among the listed crimes: fraud/identity theft, espionage, and protection of trade secrets. It should not surprise you that the list of applicable crimes has not changed in the budget bill version.

4. The new CISA act retains all the "specific person" and "technical capability configured to remove any information" language regarding personally identifiable information in "cyber threat indicators". The "scrub", by the way, has always applied to private entities (Techdirt may have tripped over themselves to write this bullet point, because the new bill clarifies "entity", "federal entity", and "non-federal entity", and so the scrubbing language now reads "non-Federal entity" --- but the original bill defined "entity" as "private entity"!)

[1] http://docs.house.gov/billsthisweek/20151214/CPRT-114-HPRT-R...

dsp1234• 11 years ago

Note that Techdirt didn't have the final text of the bill (and couldn't have) since it wasn't finalized at the time. They were commenting on the proposed changes, which they acknowledge didn't all make it in to the bill[0].

So you may be commenting on old information (note that I don't see those 4 items on their current article[1]), and they specifically acknowledge the changes from yesterday's proposal to today's complete text.

They could still be wrong in their analysis, but it would be more helpful to do a breakdown of their current stance on the final bill, rather than doing a breakdown on their analysis of proposed changes with data you have from the final bill text that they didn't have access to.

[0] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151216/05514933094/as-pr...

[1] - "a few of the absolutely worst ideas didn't make it into the final bill,"

tptacek12• 11 years ago

Nope. Not even a deeply cynical misreading of the bill gets you there. Here's Techdirt's current claims:

While the reports yesterday indicated that the bill would directly allow its use in "surveillance," the list of approved uses was changed slightly to effectively hide this fact. Specifically it says that the information via CISA can be used to investigate a variety of crimes -- and doesn't say "surveillance." But, obviously, surveillance isn't a "crime" that the government will be investigating. It's just the method that the government will use to investigate crimes... which is now allowed under CISA.

Every version of CISA has included this language, and the "variety of crimes" hasn't changed and remains microscopic. The list of approved uses wasn't "changed slightly to effectively hide this fact"; in fact, the only change in the approved list of uses is the removal of an approved use.

Also, yesterday we noted that the proposed change would "remove" the privacy scrub requirements. The final bill didn't completely do that, but basically changed the standard to pretend that it's in there. Rather than demanding a full privacy scrub, the bill lets the Attorney General determine if DHS is doing a reasonable job with its privacy scrub.

"Privacy scrub" is language that Techdirt is using, but the bill never has. The CISA requirements to remove personally identifying information --- which have always applied to private entities --- is unchanged.

MrZongle2• 11 years ago

Don't you get it, America? Your masters want this. Why can't you have the good grace to let yourselves be observed and controlled without raising such a ruckus?

kossTKR2• 11 years ago

Why is this not getting massive attention here on Hackernews? Right now a post about a dude hacking together a selv driving car has garnered 5X the amount of votes on this post (not that the other post isn't interesting).

Remember that:

Apple, Reddit, Twitter, the Business Software Alliance, the Computer and Communications Industry Association, and other tech firms have all publicly opposed the bill. And a coalition of 55 civil liberties groups and security experts all signed onto an open letter opposing the bill in April. Even the Department of Homeland Security itself has warned in a July letter that the bill could flood the agency with information of “dubious value” at the same time as it “sweep[s] away privacy protections.”

http://www.wired.com/2015/10/cisa-cybersecurity-information-...

Isn't this massive news?

I mean the bill in itself is horrible policy making, but the way it's being snuck in is scandalous in its own right.

Have i misunderstood something?

sounds• 11 years ago

My thoughts are that if you're not planning for an Orwellian Nanny-State who will demand access to all your private keys, you're probably not going to be able to scale up to the UK and China.

HN readers will be designing business models with that in mind.

Not saying this is "old news," just that the actual bill that aligns the US with China in terms of human rights violations will not affect startups as much as it will affect large incumbent businesses: Apple, Reddit, Google, Amazon, etc.

Those incumbents will continue to make money right up until they are disrupted by startups who can route around the internet damage caused by the US spying infrastructure. [1]

So here's a toast to the first HN company that succeeds.

[1] https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Gilmore, from the perspective that spying has chilling effects and is part of a total censorship program.

tptacek12• 11 years ago

Because virtually the same bill passed the Senate with 75% support, and the House passed the (significantly worse) PCNA back in April at approximately the same margin.

This bill was going to become law; the only question was whether the conference committee between the House and Senate would change it --- if it had, it would have changed it for the worse, since the House bill is worse than the Senate bill, which is the one that's going to pass.

There's just not much of a story here.

kossTKR2• 11 years ago

That makes sense.

Although when looked through policy-making perspective this change is further stabilizing the already dystopian trajectory of international tech laws.

The worst of the worst just keeps getting compiled and eventually voted through. And under the guise of "war on terrorism", "war on pedophiles", "war on hackers" etc.

I just don't see this ending anything but horribly.

Either with a monopoly driven "light-net" full of censorship, and no way of entry for the "smaller" businesses, ngo's, dissident groups etc.

Or worse with a global pre-crime dictatorship.

ccvannorman3• 11 years ago

985-222-CISA

If you live in the United States, this phone number connects you with your congresspeople and senators in order to make your voice heard.

Citizens stopped CISA before, we can do it again. Don't lie down.

ccvannorman3• 11 years ago

Edit: I've seen a few people calling BS on this because of TechDirt. I found it from the EFF, who gave me this number to call. I feel strongly about surveillance legislation because I don't want myself or my friends to go to prison because [insert corp here] decided I did something illegal with their electronic content, and I don't want my geolocation, etc. perpetually in the hands of anyone with a security clearance.

tptacek12• 11 years ago

Sec 102.(5)(B):

The term cybersecurity threat does not include any action that solely involves a violation of a consumer term of service or a consumer licensing agreement

joesmo• 11 years ago

Anything that ends up in the yearly budget bill has absolutely no hope of getting voted down. It's not even worth one's breath to call, not even the energy to pick up a cellphone or even to tweet. It's as good as passed.

efnx• 11 years ago

Why is this allowed?

dude3• 11 years ago

This is interesting too

TEMPORARY H-1B VISA FEE INCREASE.—Not- withstanding section 281 of the Immigration and Nation-ality Act (8 U.S.C. 1351) or any other provision of law, during the period beginning on the date of the enactment of this section and ending on September 30, 2025, the combined filing fee and fraud prevention and detection fee required to be submitted with an application for admission as a nonimmigrant under section 101(a)(15)(H)(i)(b) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (8 U.S.C. 1101(a)(15)(H)(i)(b)), including an application for an extension of such status, shall be increased by $4,000 for applicants that employ 50 or more employees in the United States if more than 50 percent of the applicant’s employees are nonimmigrants described in section 101(a)(15)(L) of such Act.

ones_and_zeros• 11 years ago

I'd be really interested to know what businesses in the United States have more than half of its employees here on H-1B visas.

falsestprophet• 11 years ago

Companies like Infosys, Tata Consultancy Services, and Wipro who provide our country with tens of thousands of the world's greatest minds to maintain enterprise applications for about $70,000 a year.

beatpanda2• 11 years ago

P.S., the reason you don't see as much wrangling or dramatic threats to shut down the government over this budget bill is because a bunch of stuff like this was loaded into it. Because Congress is under enormous pressure by law enforcement and intelligence agencies to undermine computer security in the name of "safety", but they can't be seen doing it because it's extremely unpopular.

What will be interesting is if all the riders on this budget bill are so unpopular that the voting public demands a government shutdown.

Personally, I think everyone here is better off spending time writing software to make surveillance less practical. Even if the U.S. government is nominally constrained by laws (they aren't in practice), there are plenty of other actors in the world that aren't governed by any constraints and will monitor all electronic communications up to their technical capacity to do so.

If you care about privacy and information security you need to be working on tools to make it impossible for surveillance to occur, not petitioning a Congress that is dead-set on screwing you.

collin123• 11 years ago

:( ugh not again

pnathan• 11 years ago

Rolling in a little late here, I am actually wondering what substantive rationale exists here. There are super competent people in the government, and they do percolate information out to Congress. So I don't think it's fully appropriate to call the Congress-critters chumps (although it's a national pastime), and I do also wonder what the effective means of altering policy are(No, I don't think the EFF is being effective).

Congress has added CISA to the federal budget bill

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