Increasingly, the U.S. government has shown an intense desire to "friend" you, to "follow" you, to get to know your every online move.
Now they're channeling that desire towards legislation that clears the path for authorities to work with companies like Facebook, Google and AT&T to snoop on Internet-using Americans.
The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act or CISPA, is wending its way through Congress where it could get a favorable vote unless elected representatives hear their constituents' concerns in time.
That's why a coalition of online rights advocates (including the Free Press Action Fund) have joined forces to kill CISPA before more of our online rights are lost to those seeking to turn the Internet into a massive surveillance complex.
Promoted to protect our national interests against a loosely defined horde of cyber-terrorists, CISPA goes far beyond its stated purposes, sacrificing almost all of our online privacy rights without any safeguards against abuse. It's the type of misguided Internet legislation that we have seen in the past, where government and corporations craft restrictive new laws without giving Internet users a seat at the table. Will they never learn?
Groups including EFF, Avaaz.org, Free Press Action Fund, ACLU, Access, CDT and the American Library Association have just launched "Stop Cyber Spying Week" so that Washington understands that the online rights of millions of Americans are not negotiable. In addition to helping Americans contact Congress, these groups have unleashed the power of Twitter against any legislator weighing a vote for this bad bill.
The folks behind CISPA claim that national security interests make this surveillance necessary, but the bill's language is so vague and overreaching that it opens the door for rampant abuse. Here's what's wrong:
CISPA could lead all too easily to governmental and corporate attacks on our digital freedoms. And while there is a real need to protect vital national interests from cyber attacks, we can't do it at the expense of our rights.
Facebook, which supports CISPA, now counts more than 800 million users worldwide. It's frightening to imagine a world where Mark Zuckerberg and his colleagues could act with impunity to help the U.S. government keep tabs on all of us.
The goal of Stop Cyber Spying Week is simple: Get Congress to back away from this dangerous legislation. The only way to do that is by speaking out.
Follow Timothy Karr on Twitter: www.twitter.com/TimKarr
Hopefully, all of this capability will one day be repurposed for mankind's general advancement through discovery of cause and effect relationships. Right now, it seems to me to be a kind of a paranoid fear trying to keep a lid on state secrets which finances this surveillance.
Just as Eisenhower enacted the building of the interstate highways on the idea of national defense, I am hoping that this Total Information Awareness campaign will launch mankind into an new era of introspective awareness and truth (and hopefully not SkyNet...)
♥ ED
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/data_mining_for_a_new_american_world_20120404/
There are journalists that are stopped for questioning every time they enter the country. Their electronics are taken from them and the contents copied.
Did you not read about the gigantic facility being constructed in UT to store everything that passes along the wires, and I do mean everything.
You really seem to have NO idea how close to the edge the US is moving. You aren't "innocent" any longer. You really do need to worry about what tthey collect about you, because everything and be misinterpreted or taken out of context or just plain written down wrong. If someone decides you are trouble, then that is it for you.
And finally don't forget we are in the age of indefinite lock-ups now.