Treacherous Senate Rolls Out New Cybersecurity Bill

The number one enemy of the American people and enablers of the ongoing spree to gut the US Constitution is at it again with yet another attack on privacy. The Senate, led by the impenetrable firewall of cellulite that protects the NSA Stasi - California's Dianne Feinstein - has just passed out of committee a new cybersecurity bill that represents the institutionalized rottenness of the legislative body in all of it's resplendent putrescence. The onerous bill, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) was voted on in secret to avoid that always pesky public scrutiny and with a 12-3 win is headed to the full Senate in an election year where it should easily pass given the renewed climate of fear-mongering and demagoguery since the magnificently fortuitous appearance of ISIS and the return of US troops to Iraq. The Republicans will bludgeon the always feckless Democrats as being weak on terrorism and the party of Obama and Hillary, terrified at being called chicken will submit.

The bill is a resurrection of CISPA which while passing the House of Representatives - it was championed by the puffy fascist from Michigan Congressman Mike Rogers who will soon be leaving for a right-wing talk radio career - didn't make through the Senate which allowed Feinstein and her fellow snakes ample opportunity to scheme and CISA was the result. This bill is nothing but one more betrayal by the US Congress and a sellout to corporate America, which will have bestowed upon it the gift of immunity as customer data is passed onto the NSA without a warrant under the guise of protection against cyber attacks - the newest version of WMD which serve as justification to sell out Americans for political gain.

According to a story in The Guardian, "Senate committee adopts cybersecurity bill opposed by NSA critics":

Pushed by Dianne Feinstein and Saxby Chambliss, the California Democrat and Georgia Republican who lead the committee, the bill would remove legal obstacles that block firms from sharing information "in real time" about cyber-attacks and prevention or mitigation measures with one another and with the US government.

Worrying civil libertarians is that the NSA and its twin military command, US Cyber Command, would receive access to vast amounts of data, and privacy guidelines for the handling of that data are yet to be developed.

A draft of the bill released in mid-June would permit government agencies to share, retain and use the information for "a cybersecurity purpose" – defined as "the purpose of protecting an information system or information that is stored on, processed by or transiting an information system from a cybersecurity threat or security vulnerability" – raising the prospect of the NSA stockpiling a catalogue of weaknesses in digital security, as a recent White House data-assurance policy permits.

It would also prevent participating companies from being sued for sharing data with each other and the government, even though many companies offer contract terms of service prohibiting the sharing of client or customer information without explicit consent.

AND

Champions of a similar bill that passed the House of Representatives last year despite a White House veto threat urged the full Senate to follow the intelligence panel's lead.

"These attacks cost our country billions of dollars through the loss of jobs and intellectual property. We are confident that the House and the Senate will quickly come together to address this urgent threat and craft a final bill that secures our networks and protects privacy and civil liberties," said Mike Rogers of Michigan and Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, the Republican and Democratic leaders of the House intelligence committee.

[That would be the same Dutch Ruppersberger whose  Congressional district happens to include the Fort Meade command center of the NSA Stasi and Mike Rogers whose wife is a lobbyist - isn't it a conflict of interest to have a husband who presides over the House Intelligence Committee?]

But digital rights advocates warn that the measure will give the government, including the NSA, access to more information than just that relating to cyberthreats, potentially creating a new avenue for broad governmental access to US data even as Congress and the Obama administration contemplate restricting the NSA's domestic collection.

The bill contains "catch-all provisions that would allow for the inclusion of a lot more than malicious code. It could include the content of communications. That's one of the biggest concerns," said Gabriel Rottman, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union.

The CISA data-sharing agreement is nothing more than a convenient end-around, a circumvention of any sort of legal restraint that will throw open the door to increased data-mining and content grabbing of millions of innocent US citizens/consumers which will be delivered to an unaccountable NSA without any oversight. But then again that is what Congress, particularly the high-powered committee heads are there for, to grease the rails and use every sort of legal trickery in the book to violate their oaths to uphold the Constitution while selling out their constituents for a dollar a dozen.

There is still an opportunity to stop CISA by bringing immense public pressure and utilizing privacy organization petitions and mailing tools but it is going to be a pitched, uphill battle against an entrenched enemy that in no way other than lip-service represents regular Americans. 

New Revelations Show that NSA Spied on Top Ally Israel

Stunning new revelations from former government contractor Booz-Allen-Hamilton employee turned whistleblower Edward Snowden have shown the NSA has been spying on that most indispensable ally of them all – Israel.  In a Guardian story that broke Friday it was reported that the American Stasi and their partners in crime across the pond GCHQ were spying on former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, the latest addition to the list of “allies” that been targets of the rogue intelligence agency. U.S. intelligence thugs also maintained an apartment across the street from then Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak as well.  It is going to be very interesting to see how this goes over particularly with the normal public proclamations that United States leaders are in ‘lockstep’ with the Israelis and that there is “no daylight” between the most critical as well as most high maintenance country in the Middle East. I can’t imagine that Israel would be in the least bit shocked that the NSA is spying on their leaders, after all General Alexander’s electronic goon squads already have a sharing agreement or a "memorandum of understanding" to provide the data of millions of law-abiding Americans to the Israeli intelligence services as was previously reported. The spying on Jewish leaders should send a chill down the spines of all who have an awareness of history and any comparisons to the German Gestapo would be fair to make despite protestations by the politically correct who regularly invoke Godwin's Law to stifle free speech against tyrannical actions of out of control governments.

The spying on Israeli leaders is only a part of the investigative tale conducted jointly by the Guardian, Der Spiegel and the New York Times that also outed other targets including charities and the vice president of the European Commission none of which have a damned thing to do with 'terrorists' but rather industrial espionage and using the power of the U.S. state surveillance apparatus to create an unfair competitive balance. Hell, given that free enterprise has effectively been killed here in The Homeland where ingenuity, hard work and the once taken for granted virtue of American fair play have been replaced by bribery, lying, cheating, legal chicanery and buying political influence have replaced what was once capitalism only schmucks play fairly and those who are the most successful continue to destroy the system that at one time made this country into an economic power second to none. That  however is a story for another time which most assuredly will be coming soon as more documents are leaked debunking the corrupt government's ongoing sale of these monstrous programs as being necessary to keep us all safe.

Interestingly the normally demagogic paranoid right wing Israeli leader  Bibi Netanyahu was at first strangely muted on this gross breach of trust from a critical ally but has now vented, calling the snooping “unacceptable” and has called for an investigation of the activities. Not that there should be much sympathy for Netanyahu given his bellicose rhetoric, refusal to allow for a diplomatic solution over the Iranian nuclear program and the outright summoning of his loyal winged monkeys in the U.S. Congress to sabotage the talks but he is absolutely correct it is “unacceptable”. Being criticized for aggressive intelligence gathering by the Israelis though is pretty goddamned hypocritical given the existende of the aforementioned “memorandum of understanding” as well as the currently incarcerated American citizen Jonathan Pollard, a civilian intelligence employee who was a spy for Israel and convicted to a life sentence. Mr. Netanyahu has long been a top advocate for the release of Pollard and he is already using the news about the NSA’s spying on Olmert and Barak to push for his release, cynically posting a video of him meeting with Pollard's wife on You Tube. There is also the ugly history of Israeli meddling in domestic U.S. politics notably the AIPAC spy case in which two pro-Israeli lobbyists, Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman were receiving transfers of classified information from former Defense Department employee Lawrence Franklin. Franklin was charged under the Espionage Act before the Obama administration’s flagrant abuse of it but the case against the AIPAC lobbyists was dropped, one can only imagine how much dirty laundry would have been aired had the trial been allowed to proceed. Bibi has a valid point but in the constitutional wasteland of the post-September 11. 2001 world hypocrisy has become the coin of the realm. So far he has yet to formally accuse Obama of running a Gestapo unlike German Chancellor Angela Merkel who has rightly affixed the Stasi label to Barry and the boys and their fascist surveillance machine.

I would wonder where all of the ardent defenders of both the NSA Stasi and waging wars that are more in the national interest of Israel than the United States stand on this, in particular the Senate renegades who are going to ring in the new year with the Iran negotiation killing bill that will set the stage for the war with Iran. Democrat New Jersey Senator and alleged prostitute chaser Robert Menendez and Israeli toady Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois and the 26 co-sponsors of their anti-American bill to effectively nuke the P5+1 negotiations have an interesting conundrum that only can only further expose their corruption, hypocrisy and disloyalty to their American constituents. How can they condemn the mass NSA surveillance that most of those fascists so adore only when it includes spying on Israel at the same time that they are hellbent on an unprecedented subversion of American interests in order to deliver Netanyahu his war? Were this a sane country where the rules of law were respected then Jonathan Pollard would soon have 27 new buddies in his cell block.