On Friday, Congress passed a $1.15 trillion omnibus spending package to continue funding the federal government, which included an already defeated, and extremely controversial cyber security bill, that was inserted into the spending package as a means of assuring its passage.
In spite of this massive revelation and horrific blow to privacy, the mainstream media remains mum. While many outlets are covering the passage of the spending bill, they are completely omitting anything about CISA.
The New York Times, for example, broke the story Friday morning about Congress passing the omnibus measure. However, they conveniently left out any mention of CISA.
Aside from the tech sites who know about the dangers of this measure, the entire realm of mainstream media is choosing to remain silent.
The Cyber Information Sharing Act (CISA), quietly pushed back in 2014 before being shut down by civil rights and privacy advocates, was added into the Omnibus Appropriations Bill by House Speaker Paul Ryan as a means circumventing rampant opposition to the anti-privacy legislation.
The CISA legislation, which Rep. Justin Amash called “the worst anti-privacy legislation since the USA PATRIOT Act,” has now been passed by Congress and will be signed into law by President Obama as part of the government spending package.
Advocates of the CISA provisions say their aim is to help prevent cyber threats, but critics say that the legislation essentially gives corporations legal immunity when sharing consumers’ private data about hacks and digital breaches with the Department of Homeland Security.
According to a report by Wired:
It creates the ability for the president to set up “portals” for agencies like the FBI and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, so that companies hand information directly to law enforcement and intelligence agencies instead of to the Department of Homeland Security. And it also changes when information shared for cybersecurity reasons can be used for law enforcement investigations. The earlier bill had only allowed that backchannel use of the data for law enforcement in cases of “imminent threats,” while the new bill requires just a “specific threat,” potentially allowing the search of the data for any specific terms regardless of timeliness.
Originally, the CISA anti-privacy legislation was shelved after a public outcry against the bill, but corporations soon realized the bill would provide them with legal immunity for sharing customers’ private data with the government and began a renewed effort to pass CISA.
And miraculously, even in defeat, a bad bill became worse, and a crisis became an opportunity.
“They took a bad bill, and they made it worse,” Robyn Greene, policy counsel for the Open Technology Institute, told Wired.
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“They’ve got this bill that’s kicked around for years and had been too controversial to pass, so they’ve seen an opportunity to push it through without debate. And they’re taking that opportunity.”
By including CISA into the government’s overall spending package, it meant that for anti-privacy legislation to be defeated the spending bill had to also be defeated, which would have meant a government shutdown beginning next week.
“Unfortunately, this misguided cyber legislation does little to protect Americans’ security and a great deal more to threaten our privacy than the flawed Senate version. Americans demand real solutions that will protect them from foreign hackers, not knee-jerk responses that allow companies to fork over huge amounts of their customers’ private data with only cursory review.” Sen. Ron Wyden said of the insertion of the CISA into the spending bill.
It’s a shameful testament to the power of corporations and the intelligence community, to craft legislation that the American people clearly don’t support and then hide it within a budget bill to gain passage of the legislation, due to the fact that the public would never support it otherwise. What’s more is that the Praetorian guard, also known as the mainstream media is choosing to keep it out of the public’s eye.
“There’s plenty wrong with this omnibus, but there’s nothing more egregious than the cyber language they secretly slipped in,” Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) told The Hill by email.
Sadly, this seems to be business as usual in Washington, D.C.
When corporations and government craft and push their own legislation, which by large measure individuals and the public don’t support, corporate fascism is clearly at the doorstep. A dangerous stage is being set for turnkey totalitarianism in the United States.
Please share this article with your friends and family who will most assuredly not hear about it on the TV or radio.
Jay Syrmopoulos is an investigative journalist, free thinker, researcher, and ardent opponent of authoritarianism. He is currently a graduate student at University of Denver pursuing a masters in Global Affairs. Jay’s work has been published on Ben Swann’s Truth in Media, Truth-Out, Raw Story, MintPress News, as well as many other sites. You can follow him on Twitter @sirmetropolis, on Facebook at Sir Metropolis and now on tsu.
Have you not heard of that madman who lit a lantern in the bright morning hours, ran to the market-place, and cried incessantly: “I am looking for democracy! I am looking for democracy!”
“Where has democracy gone?” he cried. “I shall tell you. We have killed him – you and I. We are his murderers. But how have we done this? How were we able to drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon?
“Democracy is dead. Democracy remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we, murderers of all murderers, console ourselves? With what water could we purify ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we need to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? ”
Here the madman fell silent and again regarded his listeners; and they too were silent and stared at him in astonishment. At last he threw his lantern to the ground, and it broke and went out. “I have come too early,” he said then; “my time has not come yet. The tremendous event is still on its way, still travelling – it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time, the light of the stars requires time, deeds require time even after they are done, before they can be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than the distant stars – and yet they have done it themselves.”
After learning that CISA passed, I’ve got the same look on my face as Leonardo DeCaprio when he gets raped by a bear.
LOL
A look of pleasure?
Oddly the media is also silent on the “fact” that none of this so called legislation actually applies to anyone!
Should you disagree and you believe it does apply. Then lets see your evidence.
Your proof/evidence MUST be tangible, factual, personal firsthand, irrefutable information, your proof/evidence shall not be comprised of something you heard, ie hearsay, nor rumors, historical documents that don’t have the wet ink signature of any man/woman being charged “without said signature, it would definitively excludes any man/woman as a party to said document”, Nor shall you spew your opinions, someone else’s opinions, your beliefs, someone else’s beliefs, your feelings, someone else’s feelings, assumptions, presumptions, hypotheticals, conjecture, sophistry, obfuscation, fraud, lies, scenarios or what if’s.
Further; You shall not invoke laws, statutes, codes, policies, treaties, etc, or any CON-stitution or any amendments to any CON-stitution, as that presupposes that any of it is applicable, when that is what is in question in the first place!
Good luck!
Most are confused by the meaning of “applies” as they don’t see it as a question of legitimacy. They believe it applies to them because someone will likely physically assault them with it, not because they actually comprehend what is happening. Perhaps they are just still kids.
mentally
Since the traitors and enemy alien fifth columnists who populate congress pledge allegiance to Israel I’m not surprised.
Yup. They are scared. The slaves are awake.
Why bother to share the article? There’s really only one way to take this place back now and we all know it…
Never a good thing to hand more to the nation’s criminal police. This is more a book than a thread posting. The time has come to eet theft with violence. I urge violence against the thieves of our lives.
OF COURSE THE ** DRIVE BY ** NEWS MEDIA will not put a word out about such a LAW -= OBOIOOOMASSS – the magnificent FARCE – woul not like any adverse news mentioned aobut such a law being passed . ///////////////////////////////////////////
SEMPER PRATUS
Joker govs everywhere. Hope people come to realize they are on their own. Big government is out to kill you. When did it happen that people trusted gov more than self reliance? The us is finished, and the person in the house has made it happen along with all the shadow beings. Thanks, but no thanks. I have never taken to the hive mind. Rebellious child. Rebellious adult. See you self deceived liars. Do your thing while you can. Ultimately, you loooooooose
“See to it, then, that the light within you is not darkness.” (Luke 11:35)
“The eye is the lamp of the body. If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light. But if your eyes are unhealthy, your whole body will be full of darkness. If then the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness!” (Matthew 6:22-23)
________________________________
“The light can be darkened only through evil thoughts and evil deeds. If we follow the leading of the light, then does the light become brighter and brighter, and it leads to all good tidings. To follow the light means to hold pure thoughts, constructive thoughts, to do such deeds as will not only lead us upwards but will bring neither harm, loss, nor pain to a living being. Whereas, if the thoughts are evil and destructive, if our acts consider only the self for the time being and bring pain, loss, misery, and sorrow upon others, then are we continually darkening the light that is within us; and, if evil is persisted in, this ends in total darkness of the light. And how great is the darkness! For when once this darkness is complete, then has the divine spark been so completely covered with evil as to have lost the individuality it might have possessed in that human being; thus it only awaits the release that enables it to return to the Father whence it came and to enter once more on its mission in another life.”
Time to exit the Internet for good.
There is no longer ANY legal protection for citizens.
The First Amendment has been completely destroyed by this bill.
You still do have the Freedom to get away from the cyberbullying government by, turning it off.
I am not here to educate you. willful ignorance is a disease!
Solzhenitsyn saw it coming HERE, tried to tell Amerikans, then got disgusted at their ignorance and apathy, and returned to Russia.
Tyrants ALWAYS find members of a nation to TURN on fellow citizens and betray them for a few shekels and a modicum of power. And yes, I am referring to the President, Congress, Supreme Court, FBI, CIA, NSA, NRO, and countless other spook groups.