Rep. Mike Rogers Calls CISPA Opponents "14 Year Old Tweeters in Their Basement"

http://cms.fightforthefuture.org/mike-rogers/

by dylangs1030 • 13 years ago

90 83 13 years ago

cms.fightforthefuture.org

sinak• 13 years ago

Debate on CISPA is happening on the floor right now, you can watch online here: http://www.c-span.org/Live-Video/C-SPAN/

But most importantly, take 2 minutes and call your House Rep and tell them what you think about CISPA: https://eff.org/r.5bPw

CoughlinJ• 13 years ago

I called my reps last week, but it also might not be a bad idea to drop Rogers a line on twitter, explaining who and what you are, and telling him that you oppose the bill.

I found it quite cathartic.

dylangs10302• 13 years ago

I hope you didn't forget to mention that you're neither 14 nor residing in a basement.

cs702• 13 years ago

As Senator Mark Hanna said in 1895 (118 years ago!): "There are two things that are important in politics. The first is money, and I can't remember what the second one is."[1] If you want to understand why Representative Mike Rogers is mocking CISPA opponents as "14 Year Old Tweeters in Their Basement," just ask, who finances his political campaigns?

I hate to be cynical, but calling your Representative may not be enough. Judging by Hanna's 118-year-old quote, it's never been enough. In the long run the solution might be campaign finance reform, but in the short run we may also want organizations like the EFF to raise money so they can finance political campaigns aligned with their values, gaining more influence over the political process.

[1] http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/405598-there-are-two-things-...

Aloisius• 13 years ago

Is there a good lobby to donate to that lobbies for EFF-like positions?

tptacek24• 13 years ago

EFF is happy to take your money.

disposition2• 13 years ago

http://www.opensecrets.org/politicians/contrib.php?cycle=201...

rwmj• 13 years ago

What's scary is how cheap it is to buy politicians.

debt• 13 years ago

it seems these days you can swap out the word "politics" in that quote with just about any other field and it'll remain just as true.

thedufer2• 13 years ago

That's what we call capitalism. The difference is that politicians are supposed to represent the people, not just the people with money, but in practice they are also capitalists.

nijiko• 13 years ago

It's being voted on today and tomorrow, make these days count.

ryanmolden2• 13 years ago

Anytime someone's argument is the moral equivalent of 'my opponents are doodie-heads' I pretty much start ignoring them. It is a shame that an elected official, ostensibly 'leading' our country, is making such idiotic arguments and isn't more embarrassed about doing so.

ryandvm• 13 years ago

The problem with ignoring politicians is that it just encourages them...

ryanmolden2• 13 years ago

Yes, when I said ignore I meant from an information gathering perspective. If I care about an issue enough I will actively donate to organizations representing my interests. It is really all I can do when <insert idiot politician> is from an area I have no vote in.

johnbellone2• 13 years ago

Or if you ignore them they go along and do what the corporations want. What you need to do is vote out the incumbents during the next cycle. Irregardless of the party.

dylangs10302• 13 years ago

Unfortunately, you can ignore politicians, but they're not going to ignore you...insofar as your rights are concerned at least.

PeterisP• 13 years ago

In some aspect he is exactly right - our CISPA fight needs support not only from tweeters, but from people like founders of Twitter who can speak in the language of money and campaign funds.

The tech industry is so much bigger and more important to USA economy than the content industry that allowing them to dominate the lobbying discussion is just a 'tail wagging the dog' situation.

Jach• 13 years ago

CISPA has nothing to do with the content industry. You'll also find that the tech industry has plenty of lobbyists, and a few of them are supporting CISPA. (Ed: Ah, there's tptacek on this thread.)

tptacek24• 13 years ago

Mike Rogers is making it very hard to defend CISPA by saying things like this, but I'll point out that what Mike Rogers thinks about CISPA opponents is probably the least important thing to know about the bill.

Something you might want to know is that "Fight For The Future" feels comfortable riling you up without telling you the full story about the bill. CISPA, according to FFTF, "lets the government spy on you without a warrant". In actual fact, CISPA is an opt-in measure that allows a company like Yahoo to share information about ongoing attacks --- which find a specific definition in the bill, more specific than any other cyber bill proposed --- with security providers and with law enforcement.

It's been my experience that most people who oppose CISPA are not familiar with what the bill actually says, even though CISPA is a very short bill. There are principled opponents of CISPA with very strong arguments, but sites like FFTF are unprincipled in their opposition to the bill.

ahallock3• 13 years ago

I'm not familiar with the bill, but based on your description, why does there need to be a bill to share information about attacks with law enforcement and security providers? Why couldn't this happen already? If Yahoo! were sharing data with a security agency about an attack, this would seem pretty reasonable.

tptacek24• 13 years ago

Why not just read the bill?

homosaur3• 13 years ago

What you say is misleading. You say "allow them to share," when you should say "immunity from prosecution related to damages resulting from them sharing."

Basically, it's open season on surveillance because now companies aren't liable if requests are followed in "good faith," which essentially means "we did whatever the government wanted."

tptacek24• 13 years ago

I'm not sure how anything you said contradicts anything I said. Service providers are, by the way, not immunized from civil suits if they share information not incident to an actual attack.

Jormundir• 13 years ago

So getting an internet connection from a company that has opted in means I have no protection against searches and seizures (almost arbitrarily based on an individual's web habbits).

So what if it's written specifically? People often don't have much of a choice when it comes to their ISPs, and wouldn't be able to just choose another one that doesn't opt in. In the modern world, where people use the internet for every facet of their life, this essentially means law enforcement gets to know every detail about you, without the need for any reasonable suspicion.

I really don't understand how this isn't a violation of the 4th Amendment. Our rights as citizens and as people are being removed by bills like this, and by law enforcement and large service platform based businesses redefining what personal information is ours to control and own.

andylei• 13 years ago

> So getting an internet connection from a company that has opted in means I have no protection against searches and seizures (almost arbitrarily based on an individual's web habbits)

no, that's not anywhere in the bill. did you read the bill?

guelo• 13 years ago

That is a dishonest attack against a short marketing website. Your comment defends CISPA without telling the full story of the bill, just like this website did. You used a short description of what you think are relevant points that support your case, just like this website. Except that the website includes links to analysis by EFF, ACLU, Sunshine Foundation and others to support their arguments.

tptacek24• 13 years ago

Maybe FFTF can tell us how many people hit their signup sheet, versus the number of people who click through to the background information.

Maybe you could point out the call to action I must have missed on this site, urging readers to learn more about the bill before signing up with FFTF.

bcoates• 13 years ago

By "opt-in", surely you mean I'll be asked before data hosted in my accounts or pertaining to me is shared? If that's the case then I don't see anything wrong with CISPA.

codygman2• 13 years ago

Can't said companies already opt-in to share information about "ongoing attacks"?

tptacek24• 13 years ago

No. It is much more complicated than that.

kunai• 13 years ago

Here we go with you again, tptacek.

I have far fewer karma than you, and have been on HN far fewer days, but I'm not stupid. And I know that your hypocrisy on every single HN post regarding CISPA is reaching an intolerable level.

Your rhetoric is flawed at a very basic level -- you claim that the EFF and other institutions are not telling you the complete truth about the bill and advocate it with such ferocity, yet, even you fail to present valid arguments.

You use smoke-and-mirrors tactics to distract readers from the real point -- which is not whether anti-CISPA institutions are telling you "the whole truth" -- but whether CISPA infringes on the Fourth Amendment. The bill has loopholes, and the traditional unclear and tangled legalese that is all too prevalent in bills such as these only ensures there will be more to come.

Sometimes a vocal majority can be wrong. But that doesn't mean you should discredit their rhetoric, because it's valuable. If we all did what you said, we would be likely still be living in monarchical England.

jules6• 13 years ago

Given that you are running a security company, in that respect you have personal interest in this bill getting passed, right?

The problems with the bill are mainly this:

1. The immunity gives companies an incentive to share more data.

2. There is neither oversight nor transparency for the sharing of information and other measures companies are allowed to take based on this bill, and what the government and third parties are allowed to do with the information.

3. Even if there were oversight, the conditions under which the companies would get immunity are so broad and ill defined that there is practically no restriction on that.

I would like to add that there are people who make hysterical arguments against the bill, but that doesn't mean that the bill isn't bad.

tptacek24• 13 years ago

We run a software security engineering firm, we don't do FedGov work, and in no way benefit from CISPA.

The whole point of the bill is to get companies to share more data.

hkmurakami• 13 years ago

I find the choice of "14 year olds" quite fascinating, because 14 year olds don't have voting rights. If 14 is replaced with 18, then suddenly the phrase takes a completely different tone, since then it'd be disenfranchising a block of the population that has legitimate voting rights.

I feel that 14 was chosen deliberately to give teh additional implication that CISPA opponents "don't have the right to oppose it" or something along those lines.

fyi802• 13 years ago

It's also bizarrely tone-deaf metaphor-mixing.

the pejorative "basement" refers to an adult who doesn't have their own residence, and so lives in extra space in (but near the edge of) their parent's home, while pretending it is a separate residence. It doesn't make any sense to call a 14-year old a "basement"-dweller, they would have a regular bedroom.

johnbellone2• 13 years ago

Don't spend the energy debating this now. Wait until after you call your representatives and then comment.

lutusp• 13 years ago

> Rep. Mike Rogers Calls CISPA Opponents "14 Year Old Tweeters in Their Basement"

Yes -- a bunch of people who are four years away from being able to vote Rogers out of office.

zeruch• 13 years ago

And I call Mike Rogers a 54(?) year old political hack without a actual argumentative leg to stand on. This would be just another trite case of legislators wearing their donation sources on their sleeve, but the truth is that these kinds of people are dangerous to not only the tech industry in general, but really more foundational elements (I hate to sound like a CATO-monkey, because that gets irksome, but guys like Rogers and Feinstein really do trammel on "freedoms" pretty rampantly).

I've read through CISPA. It's got some very elegant wording, but its contemptible all the way around in what its going after.

Rep. Mike Rogers Calls CISPA Opponents "14 Year Old Tweeters in Their Basement"

Related Stories