“Congress bowed Wednesday to mounting pressure in the aftermath of the Paris terror attacks that left 130 people dead last month, tacking a cybersecurity provision onto Rep. Paul Ryan’s $1.15 trillion spending plan,” Allison Gatlin reports for Investor’s Business Daily. “Legislators are scheduled to vote Friday on the overall bill.”
“The cybersecurity proposal shields companies that voluntarily share threat data with the U.S. government, through the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, from any resulting consumer lawsuits, according to Reuters,” Gatlin reports. “Last month, U.S. counterterrorism officials renewed calls for backdoor access to encrypted communications, particularly those of Apple, Alphabet and Microsoft, in the wake of the Nov. 13 massacre in Paris. But privacy advocates and many Silicon Valley executives strongly oppose any government backdoor access to encrypted communications. In a September 2014 statement, Apple CEO Tim Cook said that his company would never create such a government loophole.”
“The Cybersecurity Act of 2015 doesn’t create backdoor access, but it more closely resembles the Senate version of the bill — the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) — that tech heavyweights Apple, Netflix, Facebook, Twitter and Google owner Alphabet derided in October,” Gatlin reports. “Piggybacked onto the larger spending bill, the cybersecurity provision will probably pass, FBR analyst Daniel Ives told IBD. Key to passage: The bill doesn’t zero in on encryption and backdoor access, both of which were hot-button issues in 2015.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take:
None of us should accept that the government or a company or anybody should have access to all of our private information. This is a basic human right. We all have a right to privacy. We shouldn’t give it up. We shouldn’t give in to scare-mongering or to people who fundamentally don’t understand the details. — Apple CEO Tim Cook, February 27, 2015
Visit the Apple-backed reformgovernmentsurveillance.com today.
SEE ALSO:
Obama administration wants access to smartphones – December 15, 2015
Obama administration’s calls for backdoors into encrypted communications echo Clinton-era key escrow fiasco – December 14, 2015
Donald Trump: To stop ISIS recruiting, maybe we should be talking to Bill Gates about ‘closing that Internet up in some way’ – December 8, 2015
Hillary Clinton: We need to put Silicon Valley tech firms to ‘work at disrupting ISIS’ – December 7, 2015
Apple CEO Cook: ‘You can’t have a back door that’s only for the good guys’ – November 21, 2015
Apple CEO Cook defends encryption, opposes back door for government spies – October 20, 2015
Do not let the government snoops weaken encryption – November 4, 2015
U.S. NSA seeks to build quantum computer to crack most types of encryption – January 3, 2014
Judge compares government request for Apple to access users’ iPhone data to execution order – October 27, 2015
U.S. judge expresses doubts over forcing Apple to unlock iPhone – October 26, 2015
Apple tells U.S. judge it can’t unlock iPhones running iOS 8 or higher – October 20, 2015
a href=”http://macdailynews.com/2015/10/20/apple-ceo-cook-defends-encryption-opposes-back-door-for-government-spies/”>Apple CEO Cook defends encryption, opposes back door for government spies – October 20, 2015
With Apple court order, activist federal judge seeks to fuel debate about data encryption – October 12, 2015
Judge declines to order Apple to disable security on device seized by U.S. government – October 10, 2015
Apple refused to give iMessages to the U.S. government – September 8, 2015
Obama administration war against Apple just got uglier – July 31, 2015
Edward Snowden: Apple is a privacy pioneer – June 5, 2015
Apple, others urge Obama to reject any proposal for smartphone backdoors – May 19, 2015
U.S. appeals court rules NSA bulk collection of phone data illegal – May 7, 2015
In open letter to Obama, Apple, Google, others urge Patriot Act not be renewed – March 26, 2015
Apple’s iOS encryption has ‘petrified’ the U.S. administration, governments around the world – March 19, 2015
Two thoughts on this:
Piggybacking policy on important bills, such as a budget, should be illegal. Piggybacks should pertain to the nature of the bill. For example, you should not be able to attach an abortion clause to a bridge construction project. Likewise a cyber security clause should not be attached to anything other than a security bill.
I would think, at the least, if the invasion of privacy includes a shield for companies that share data about security threats, the effect should only take place in the event that it actually results in stopping an actual security threat. If it results in personal information of non-threatening nature, to leak, example, health data, interpersonal relationships, business transactions, proprietary data – any normal data about the targeted individual, the company must face full liability for that disclosure. They must pay the price.
If we are to be probed, regardless of the Constitution, then we better have a good night out, dinner, flowers, nice music a pillow, candle light, etc. – But immunity is only when the act is effective. Make it a point that errors are not acceptable.
You left out kissed and breakfast in the morning
As far back as high school I bitched about piggybacking bills.
If it is that important to pass, then it needs to stand on its own for everyone in the public to see and for every member of congress to vote on “for everyone to see”.
They are all thieves and liars. Need “Mars Attacks” and the white house scene to happen for real.
Amen. Long time advocate of preventing piggybacking.
If you’re registered to vote, contact your representatives.
A short note, calmly written stating that you don’t support this piggybacked bill will suffice. Too much text or hyperbole and they’ll write you off as a fanatic.
@Gollum
I’m totally with you on the piggybacking. Both parties have done it for a long time and have managed to rile their opponents royally. This really is a nonpartisan issue. To make it worse, many of these riders happen at the very last minute, so the legislators voting often have no idea it’s even there.
If a rider has any merit, then let’s vote on those merits.
It should be named the cybersurveillance bill.
Treason.
By republikans
By both. Democraps and spineless Repubs.
I usually say Democraps and Revolticans.
there is no difference between the democrat party and the RINO’s…they’re both globalist traitors.
You’re ‘right’
The “Last” Democrat said it best…
“The very word “secrecy” is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it. Even today, there is little value in opposing the threat of a closed society by imitating its arbitrary restrictions. Even today, there is little value in insuring the survival of our nation if our traditions do not survive with it. And there is very grave danger that an announced need for increased security will be seized upon those anxious to expand its meaning to the very limits of official censorship and concealment.”
Not sure about “repugnant”…but I do see a fair amount of paranoia here…
yeah, right, JFK was a “paranoid tinfoil hatter.”
you are blind.
…and lived in his mom’s basement.
..while Elvis flew black helicopters overhead.
The suspicion of duplicate assassins concealed in a grassy knoll leads to calls for ever greater surveillance, ever greater restrictions on our freedoms, ever increasing oppression. Chip away at liberty, and in the end you have a pile of flint.
secrecy hides truth, not surveillance.
botvinnik is quoting President John F. Kennedy at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel, New York City, April 27, 1961. You can hear and read the full speech here:
http://www.jfklibrary.org/Research/Research-Aids/JFK-Speeches/American-Newspaper-Publishers-Association_19610427.aspx
And no, lost people. Quoting a democrat does not equate to being a democrat, which I am not. So save your ignorant rants. Thank you.
here is the most significant part, to me, of that prophetic speech:
“For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence–on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations. Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed.”
He spoke about “The Unspeakable.”
Cicero also spoke about all of the administrations since CIA George…
“A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear.”
but of those two wonderful minds, Paul said it best
:
“For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this world, against spiritual wickedness in high places.”
Do you know about ‘The Unspeakable’ concept? It’s new to me.
Thomas Merton’s “Raids on the Unspeakable”, regarding “a kind of systemic evil that includes such realities as the Holocaust, the Vietnam War, the nuclear arms race, and these assassinations.”
Thanks botvinnik. Added to my reading list. Have a great Christmas!
you too, Derek.
Apple is big on back doors! Force them to make even more I say. Go NSA, and ram a cattle prod up the back door of any CEO who interferes, frog marching them to the jailhouse sodomy lockup cell and buzzing them if they so much twitch there eyes! bzzzzzzzzzzzzz
please tell me you’re not a registered voter.
Doesn’t the term “piggyback” come from pigs doing it?
What I really like is that everyone is using the Paris attack to justify the backdoors but no-one has looked at the facts.
The police in Paris found a cell phone used by the the perpetrator and it was NOT encrypted… may be they are not that smart and no-one needed a backdoor in Paris to bust the next lot of attacks.
The Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) is:
A) Corporatocracy, treating the customer as a DEFAULT CRIMINAL and abusing them accordingly.
B) TECHNOLOGY IGNORANT.
Here we have more of the same, despite the fact that:
A) France chose to NOT take this route to totalitarianism after the Paris terror murders.
B) Hundreds of people and businesses have repeatedly attempted to help the US government Wake-The-Hell-Up to the facts of technology security.
This week I’ve updated my personal hashtag to:
#MyWillfullyStupidGovernment
This situation is an excellent example. I prefer democracy, actual intelligence and adherence to the US Constitution. Imagine that happening.
Backdoor = Hackdoor