CISPA: Say Hello To Big Brother https://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=sllDt-jlUvs
I'll be back on RT America today to discuss CISPA's not-so-shocking passage in the House. (Watch David's last appearance discussing CISPA below.)
Total surveillance of the people is what Congress ultimately wants, so it is no surprise that this is apparently a top legislative priority for them -- even at a time when 1 out of every 2 recent college graduates face unemployment. Even at a time when our total public debt is above $15 trillion.
How bad is CISPA in its current form? Here's some analysis from Techdirt: "Up until this afternoon, the final vote on CISPA was supposed to be tomorrow. Then, abruptly, it was moved up today—and the House voted in favor of its passage with a vote of 248-168. But that's not even the worst part. [...] Previously, CISPA allowed the government to use information for 'cybersecurity' or 'national security' purposes. Those purposes have not been limited or removed. Instead, three more valid uses have been added: investigation and prosecution of cybersecurity crime, protection of individuals, and protection of children. Cybersecurity crime is defined as any crime involving network disruption or hacking, plus any violation of the CFAA."
Let me put this into perspective for you:
- If the government suspects you are a genuine "bad guy," like a cyberterrorist, human trafficker, drug kingpin, etc... they can already seize all of this online activity information about you. It's called obtaining a warrant. CISPA does away with that. It supercedes ALL existing federal privacy laws. As Techdirt's Leigh Beadon put it, "Basically it says the 4th Amendment does not apply online, at all. Moreover, the government could do whatever it wants with the data as long as it can claim that someone was in danger of bodily harm, or that children were somehow threatened—again, notwithstanding absolutely any other law that would normally limit the government's power."
- Online banking and trading: dead as we know it. Who is going to use online banking services, knowing that anyone from a local police department snoop, to a federal spy agency, to even random private companies might be watching your every trade, and your purchase history, without a warrant or court involvement of ANY kind.
- The 'adult entertainment' industry: dead as we know it. Big Brother is watching you. If CISPA becomes law, which it appears on the fast-track to do, who will watch knowing that others are watching you.
- Online health databases and discussion forums such as WebMD: dead as we know it. Who will ask intimate health questions, knowing that your identity is not even semi-anonymous any more?
- Online suicide helplines, depression forums, political discussion communities: dead as we know it. Same reason as above.
- Legitimate criticism of the government: dead as we know it, especially if you are a "job seeker" who doesn't want any blemishes on your record to get in the way of surviving.
- Online communities like Reddit: dead as we know it. So much for the semi-anonymous, crowdsourced hivemind brilliance of multi-million user social communities.
- Facebook: dead as we know it (although they don't seem to care). Who will use the service, knowing that countless other companies could be watching and logging every profile and photo you view, every message you send or receive, and every connection you've ever made...
Again, allow me to stress the fact that CISPA enables snooping without a warrant or court involvement. It is absolutely ludicrous insanity. The minds behind this in Congress should be forced to resign, immediately -- they are acting in the interests of weird lobbying groups and defense contractors. They aren't acting in the interests of Internet users, the economy, nor even the health of the Internet itself.
For those hoping President Obama will wave his veto pen and make this nightmare go away: remain vigilant. He also issued a veto threat on NDAA, and then reversed that, signing it into law on New Year's Eve with almost no media attention given to it. This President, and all future Presidents, now have the ability to order the U.S. military to imprison American citizens, without trial nor access to an attorney.
Subject: Re: Police State Mon May 07, 2012 12:11 pm
jessica shirtz on Apr 27, 2:14 PM said: "The breakdown of the House CISPA vote was as follows:"
•Republicans: 206 in favor, 28 opposed •Democrats: 42 in favor, 140 opposed
That gives a sadly clear picture of just how disgustingly BIG-GOVERNMENT Republicans are, and how little we can count on them to protect our freedom and privacy!
Subject: Re: Police State Mon May 07, 2012 2:07 pm
Eber, good video. It shows well how this rotten government is decimating our freedoms at an alarming pace. Notice that it was primarily the Republicans who passed CISPA.
Republicans SUCK!
eber322
Posts : 2915 Join date : 2009-10-10 Location : Michigan
Subject: Re: Police State Mon May 07, 2012 6:52 pm
Yes they do. They started the latest movement to take away our rights (Patriot Act), and even though the democrats have continued it, the Republicans are still all behind taking the rest of them.
As far as I'm concerned, CISPA is illegal. We are protected from unreasonable searches and seizures by the Constitution. And since the Connie was never amended to remove those rights, this 'law' is actually invalid.
Subject: Re: Police State Wed May 09, 2012 8:43 pm
Yes, it is Constitutionally invalid, but the traitors in congress don't give a crap about that. Most federal laws today are Unconstitutional and therefore invalid, but that doesn't stop the feds from enforcing them. Our government is almost totally corrupt and lawless, and ObamNey will continue that.
Anyway, CISPA is now before the Senate, and we all need to contact our senators and tell them HELL NO!
Subject: Re: Police State Fri May 25, 2012 6:04 pm
War on Cameras Map http://www.copblock.org/cameramap/
Project created and maintained by Dr. Q
Across the country, police officers and other government officials are waging a war on cameras. People everywhere are being harassed, detained, threatened, assaulted, and even arrested just for legally taking photographs or filming. Government officials are even unlawfully confiscating cameras and destroying photographs and videos. This map was created to track this disturbing trend.
The map currently has more than 90 markers on it. Each marker represents one or more incidents in which a person was harassed, detained, threatened, attacked, arrested, or charged with a crime for using a camera, incidents where a camera was seized, or incidents where government officials attempted to cover up video evidence. The events on the map all occurred between 2005 and the present. I have tried to place all events as close as possible to where they happened. In some cases, I was able to get the exact address. In other cases, I was able to get the street address. In others, I was only able to narrow it down to a city or town.
This map is not intended to be comprehensive. It is a perpetual work-in-progress and I will continue adding new events to it for the foreseeable future. If you would like to tell me about an incident that I missed, see below for information on how to do so.
"Attorney General Eric Holder on Monday explained why it’s legal to murder people — not to execute prisoners convicted of capital crimes, not to shoot someone in self-defense, not to fight on a battlefield in a war that is somehow legalized, but to target and kill an individual sitting on his sofa, with no charges, no arrest, no trial, no approval from a court, no approval from a legislature, no approval from we the people, and in fact no sharing of information with any institutions that are not the president. ~ David Swanson
I previously provided in-depth coverage on Holder’s speech in which he justifies the federal government’s secret program of carrying out assassination of US Citizens.
As the ACLU points out, these killings are done with no judicial oversight and the government refuses to even reveal process by which Americans to secret government “kill lists” that marks American Citizens for assassination
Here are the videos of Holder’s speech to watch for yourself, which are followed by the rest of David Swanson’s article which takes apart Holder’s statements in the same manner I did in my coverage, followed by the ACLU’s response to Holder’s speech."
Posted By Hanne Moon On May 22, 2012 In Today's Off The Grid News
The police state is alive and well in Los Angeles and San Diego counties in California. Health department employees are going door to door, threatening and intimidating raw milk customers into voluntarily turning over raw milk products they own and purchased through legal transactions.
Organic Farms, owned by Mark McAfee, is one raw milk distribution center that has been harassed by the state to give up the names of its customers after a recall of some of Organic Farms’ products earlier this year. Since then, however, Organic Farms has been cleared to resume full operations.
NaturalNews.com [1] first reported this effort over the weekend, stating that, “According to Mark McAfee … both LA County and San Diego county have attempted to acquire customer names and addresses from Organic Pastures (www.OrganicPastures.com [2]) for the sole purpose of sending “food confiscation teams” to customers’ homes to remove the raw milk from customers’ refrigerators. Using both phone calls and home visits, these teams intimidate customers and try to force them to give up their milk.”
NaturalNews further quoted McAfee:
I received a phone call yesterday morning from a wonderful young gal, a 36-year-old mom out of LA County. She’s one of our UPS customers that we deliver overnight raw milk to her house. When the CDFA was in here the other day on our recall, they demanded to have all our delivery addresses for overnight UPS delivery. We screwed up and [inadvertently] gave it to them, they got it from one of our secretaries here. The LA County health department started calling her, six or seven times, demanding that she give up her raw milk from her own home to the health department.
She refused, then they showed up at her house and demanded that she give her raw milk to them. She was getting ready to call 911 for the Sheriff’s department and have them removed from her front doorstep, and she was threatening to use her camera to take a picture of them and post it on Facebook for harassing her over her raw milk… The investigators left after she told them she was not going to give them the raw milk and to get the Hell off her property.
This is what’s going on, it’s like food Nazis, it’s incredible what these people are doing, trying to collect food from people’s houses, that have not made them ill!
Then the San Diego health department called me up and said oh we want a list of all your buyer’s club members, and I said no… and they said we want all their addresses and their names, because we want to go to their homes. I said it ain’t happening, we aren’t going to give it to you.
Raw milk sales are allowed in 30 of the 50 states, but federal law prohibits the interstate sale of the product. The FDA argues that there is a need to control raw milk because of the high number of illnesses reported from its use. However, according to the Weston A. Price Foundation, one is ten times more likely to become ill from pasteurized milk than from raw milk.
Subject: Re: Police State Sun Jun 17, 2012 10:57 am
eber322
Posts : 2915 Join date : 2009-10-10 Location : Michigan
Subject: Re: Police State Sun Jun 17, 2012 11:26 am
Somehow I don't think Churchill would be to happy to see how the UK has turned into a police nanny state with cameras everywhere and guns all but outlawed.
Subject: Re: Police State Wed Jun 20, 2012 12:01 pm
eber322 wrote:
Somehow I don't think Churchill would be to happy to see how the UK has turned into a police nanny state with cameras everywhere and guns all but outlawed.
True - the UK is a rotten police-state, and we're pretty far down that road as well. And with DemoPublicans in power, we'll arrive soon.
Posts : 2915 Join date : 2009-10-10 Location : Michigan
Subject: Re: Police State Sat Jun 23, 2012 3:36 pm
Right now they also have armed NATO special forces in Tampa, is this for the GOP convention? NATO forces to suppress any of those pesky Paul supporters that demand honest elections?