Big Brother....more domestic spying on Americans coming down the pike???

House Passes CISPA in Surprise Vote; Opponents Will Continue to Fight in Senate (click for original post)

 Friday, 27 April 2012 11:20 By Mike Ludwig, Truthout | Report

The House passed the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) in a surprise vote late Thursday despite a veto threat from the White House and opposition from civil liberties groups that say the bill undermines existing privacy law and would allow private companies to spy on American citizens.
The House passed CISPA by a vote of 248 to 168, with votes for and against coming in from both parties. A vote was expected on Friday, but the House came to a vote soon after debating the bill. The Senate will now consider the bill.
CISPA is designed to break down barriers between the government and private business and allow for open sharing of intelligence on cyber threats, such as foreign hackers. Big tech and web firms, including Facebook, AT&T and IBM, support CISPA and hope the government will provide them more information on cyber threats.
Civil liberties and Internet freedom groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the ACLU claim the bill goes too far and would allow private companies and the government to circumvent existing privacy laws that prevent domestic spying and allow big web firms to hand over private data and information, such as emails, to the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies. The ACLU and the EFF say they will continue to oppose the bill in the Senate.
"Cybersecurity does not have to mean abdication of Americans' online privacy," said ACLU legislative counsel Michelle Richardson. "As we've seen repeatedly, once the government gets expansive national security authorities, there's no going back."
Senior White House officials said Wednesday that President Obama would veto CISPA because the bill fails to protect personal privacy and does not do enough to protect the nation's core cyber infrastructure.
With online momentum leftover from the fight against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), activists launched a massive Internet campaign to stop CISPA that included more than 100,000 Tweets to members of Congress and more than one million petition signatures.
"Hundreds of thousands of Internet users spoke out against this bill, and their numbers will only grow as we move this debate to the Senate," said EFF Activism Director Rainey Reitman.
CISPA's opponents also claimed that the government could use personal information gathered by private companies to crackdown on citizens for a variety of offenses beyond cybersecurity, such as late taxes or immigration violations. Lawmakers recently worked with civil liberties groups, however, to pass amendments clarifying that the government can only use intelligence gathered under the act to address cybersecurity threats, threats to national security, threat of bodily harm to individuals and child pornography.
The House rejected additional amendments offered by Democrats and supported by CISPA opponents that would have prevented information from private citizens from landing in the hands of the National Security Administration, which was caught in 2006 working with AT&T to data mine Internet traffic and gather thousands of phone records from customers. 

This article is a Truthout original.

These words are even more appropriate now than in 2008:

"In the final analysis," I wrote in my new book The Revolution: A Manifesto, "the last line of defense in support of freedom and the Constitution consists of the people themselves. If the people want to be free, if they want to lift themselves out from underneath a state apparatus that threatens their liberties, squanders their resources on needless wars, destroys the value of their dollar, and spews forth endless propaganda about how indispensable it is and how lost we would all be without it, there is no force that can stop them."

Our time has come to act on these words.

May future generations look back on our work and say that these were men and women who, in a moment of great crisis, stood up to their politicians, the opinion-makers, and the establishment, and saved their country.

For liberty,

Ron Paul

Ron Paul Vs ...Tea-o-cons or Obama

My comment on Youtube :

Very good! Very well said!! Thank you!!! I'm a very conservative Christian and don't think the government has any business in ANYONE'S personal choices. I didn't always think this way, I was a typical "right-wing conservative". Ron Paul helped me adjust my thinking along these lines a few years ago. I'm soooo glad he did!!! Anyone with an open mind who honestly examines the liberty issues will come to the same conclusions, I'm sure.

"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself." Thomas Paine

Comment on a blog post about conservatism

As long as we stick to the constitution and the intent of our founding fathers. We need to quit trying to legislate morality and entangling ourselves in the affairs of foreign nations.

Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness means letting other people do things that we may not agree with. As long as they do not violate the rights of others.

God given inalienable rights are for ALL people, not just Amercan citizens.

We are fond of saying we want to be Constitutionalists, but what if it means re-examining and letting go of some of our long-held notions about foreign affairs and personal liberty and what true conservatism really means????

I hope and pray so.

Still feeling optimistic about Liberty. If only we can get it across that Liberty for us means Liberty for others - whom some of us would rather not have Liberty. If they don't have Liberty today, tomorrow we won't have it either.

The quote 'first they came for.....then they came for me...." comes to mind.