[Infowarrior] - Government Representatives Using 'Cybersecurity, ' 'Terrorism' As Excuses To Further Trample The Bill Of Rights

[Richard Forno]

Government Representatives Using 'Cybersecurity,' 'Terrorism' As Excuses To Further Trample The Bill Of Rights

from the they're-not-'rights'-so-much-as-they-are-'privileges,'-appar dept

Well, Facebook no longer needs to be the scapegoat when it comes to harvesting your personal information and doing nefarious things with it. Now, thanks to the House of Representatives, you can look forward to "a broad swath of ISPs and other private entities" collecting your personal data and sharing it with "the government, other businesses, or "any other entity" so long as it's for a vaguely-defined "cybersecurity purpose."

This is yet another governmental attempt to harvest personal internet usage data in hopes of somehow preventing something bad from happening in the future, all under the pretense of being hip deep in a "cyberwar." If you're looking to see who's spearheading this new attempt to rifle through your internet drawers, look no further than the bipartisan team of Committee Chairman Mike Rogers and ranking member Dutch Ruppersberger.

And they're working with un-Representative-like speed. EFF posted this information on November 30th and they are already trying to move it out of committee today (December 1st). If someone is trying to push something through posthaste, generally speaking, it's a terrible bit of legislation that would raise all sorts of objections if left out in the sunlight for any length of time.

As it's written, this bill would "trump existing privacy statutes that strictly limit the interception and disclosure of your private communications data, as well as any other state or federal law that might get in the way," even opening the door for spyware installation. (For your own protection, of course.)

The bad news gets worse ....

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http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20111201/07501916943/government-representatives-using-cybersecurity-terrorism-as-excuses-to-further-trample-bill-rights.shtml


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Just because i'm near the punchbowl doesn't mean I'm also drinking from it.