8/12/2019 Hass & Associates Online Reviews: Aaron Swartz Cant Fight the New Cybersecurity Bill, So We Must Do It

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Hass & Associates Online Reviews

Aaron Swartz Cant Fight the New Cybersecurity Bill,

So We Must Do It

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/aaron_swartz_cant_fight_the_new_cybers

ecurity_bill_so_we_must_20140713

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In late 2011 and early 2012, activists,progressive politicians and Internetcompanies led in part by Internetfreedom advocate Aaron Swartz came

together to defeat the Stop Online PiracyAct (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA).Advertised as measures against copyrightinfringement, the bills would have openedany website that contained copyrightedmaterial it was not authorized to publish

on any of its pages to a forced shutdown.

A site that unknowingly held a copyrighted image in a commentsection, for instance, would have been eligible as a violator. Virtuallyeveryone was susceptible to closure.

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The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) followed SOPA and PIPA inApril 2012. CISPA was worse than its predecessors, proposing that private companiesbe allowed to share user information, a provision that would have violated manyprivacy protections of the Internet. Recognizing this, Swartz fought again. Itsort oflets the government run roughshod over privacy protections and share personal dataabout you,he said of the bill at the time. Again, he prevailed.

Now, a year and a half after Swartz killed himself, there is the CybersecurityInformation Sharing Act. CISA is a lot like CISPA, but could end up being even worse.Privacy and civil rights groups including the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier

Foundation are standing up to fight it. In an article about the bill, the ACLUsSandraFulton wrote: CISA poses serious threats to our privacy, gives the governmentextraordinary powers to silence potential whistleblowers, and exempts thesedangerous new powers from transparency laws.The bill has been approved by theSenate Select Committee on Intelligence and will move to the Senate soon.

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Gabe Rottman, a legislative counsel and policy adviser for the ACLU, spoke withTruthdig about CISA. He said the legislation resembles not only CISPA, but theproposed Cybersecurity Act of 2012, which according to him would have been a betterbill for protecting privacy and preventing government overreach. It represented acompromise between the privacy community, industry and the folks pushingcybersecurity on the Hill,he said of the 2012 legislation. That bill did not pass. CISAborrows some of its elements and removes its privacy and civil rights protections.

It would allow the use of information that is shared with the government forcybersecurity purposes to be used in the prevention and investigation of crime under

the Espionage Act, which includes national security leaks and whistle-blowers,Rottman added. He said CISA would allow government intelligence agencies not onlyto retrieve metadata from communication companies on a voluntarybasis, but alsoto collect content from emails, texts or other written communications without awarrant.

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Once the information is in the possession of the Department of Homeland Security, themeasure would allow it to be shared with other government entities such as the NSAand the military and possibly even local police forces.

Itcould quite literally become an investigative tool,Rottman said. CISA could enablethe government to approach a communications company and find bundles ofcommunications from a number of suspects anytime a new whistle-blower is suspected.It has a provision that is meant to protect people. Personal information is supposed tobe removed if it isnt related to a cybersecurity threat, but its unclear how muchinformation would actually be scrubbed.

A further problem with CISA is that it removes protections under Freedom ofInformation Act and state laws that would allow people to inquire whether theircommunications have been collected.

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Rottman said that thechance youllfind out that your information has been shared islessened because of the FOIA exception, and there is an incentive for oversharing, andthe information automatically gets shared with the rest of the government.Furthermore, the bill protects companies that share information from beingscrutinized for having done so.

Additionally, CISA doesntaffect just whistle-blowers and those people who could beconsidered serious threats to intelligence agencies. It applies to anyone thegovernment could deem a cybersecurity threat as well. This qualification for suspicionis very broad.

In the case against Swartz over his massive, unauthorized downloading of commercialacademic journals from MIT, the courts used the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of1984 to prosecute him, alleging that downloading the journals was a violation of thenetworksterms of service.

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Under the CFAA, violating the terms of service for any website or Internet tool isconsidered a criminal offense. For instance, lying about onesage when registeringwith a website or accidentally breaking a rule listed in user contracts withFacebook or an email platform could make one a culprit. Under CISA, suchharmless violations would make user communications legally vulnerable togovernment access.

Privacy and civil rights groups also contend CISA does not contain any provisions

to protect Net neutrality. Where the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 maintained thatterms like cybersecurity threat could not be used to inflict damage on openInternet rules, CISA contains no such language.

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The ACLU, Electronic Frontier Foundation and many organizations believe CISAwould be a boon to the NSA and other intelligence agencies, as well as a seriousthreat to privacy and protection from warrantless investigation. The FourthAmendment is meant to protect Americans from such monitoring, but CISA coulderase that civil right. Swartz led the fight against the death of our privacy, anopen Internet and protection from persecution online. In his absence, others arestepping up to the plate. People continue to be outraged over the revelationsmade by NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden, but the government continues topump steroids into the spy agencysfar-reaching arms.

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