Secretive Senate Committee Rubber Stamps CISA Cybersecurity Bill

There is an acronym that is very descriptive of life in Obamastan and that is BOHICA which stands for Bend Over Here It Comes Again. The most recent example is the secretive Senate committee that just put their seal of approval on the brand new cybersecurity bill. It is just the latest stomping down of the big government jackboot on the privacy rights of law-abiding citizens. Not that the average American even has a say in the shredding of the Constitution by our rancid and rogue political system because when you have thinks like secret courts, secret panels, secret deliberations and secret deals then how can you really have a "free" country? The merger of state and corporate power has a name and that is fascism. The coming accord between big government and big business to put Americans under the watchful eye of big brother is just another step closer to the edge of that abyss.

According to the leading tech website CNET in a story entitled “Senate panel approves controversial cybersecurity bill”:

The Senate Intelligence Committee approved a controversial cyberscurity bill on Thursday that's designed to help companies and the federal government better defend against the growing threat of data breaches.

Approved by a 14-1 vote, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) aims -- by providing expanded legal liability protections to companies sharing data -- to encourage US companies to share information about security breaches with each other and government agencies. Supporters argue that the legislation is necessary to reduce the impact of an uptick in the theft of customers' personal information.

"This current bill is critically important both for our agencies that keep the country safe, and the institutions that hold millions of Americans' personal information," Sen. Richard Burr, a North Carolina Republican and chairman of the panel, said in a statement.

The committee passed a similar bill last year by a 12-3 vote, but the measure stalled after privacy advocates raised concerns that it would reinforce government powers to conduct surveillance on US citizens, particularly after former NSA contractor Edward Snowden released details of the secret spying programs.

Sen. Ron Wyden, the only lawmaker to vote against the new bill Thursday, said the measure "lacks adequate protections for the privacy rights of American consumers, and...will have a limited impact on US cybersecurity."

"This information-sharing is only acceptable if there are strong protections for the privacy rights of law-abiding American citizens," Wyden said in a statement. "If information-sharing legislation does not include adequate privacy protections, then that's not a cybersecurity bill -- it's a surveillance bill by another name."

Senator Wyden has consistently been one of the lone voices speaking out from inside the belly of the beast that is our Leviathan federal government. However, as the 14-1 vote to move closer to the inevitable cram down of this totalitarian wet dream shows, he is badly outnumbered. It’s notable to see how despite the official media narrative that Democrats and Republicans are at loggerheads over everything that when it comes to giving the federal government even more power to snoop on Americans they are in unison.

It’s the same way with foreign wars that have nothing to do with our national interests and everything to do with selling weapons to keep the campaign contributions flowing and not acting to control our porous borders. When do actual Americans have a voice on any of this crap? The idea that democracy still exists in the post 9/11 doppelganger of what used to be the United States of America is a hoax and a very sick one at that. Big time anti-American scams like the CISA bill and the coming ultra-secret Trans Pacific Trade Partnership (TPP) show how much influence that the ordinary Joe and Jane really have anymore. Just go and ask the conservatives who turned out in droves back in November to make a statement for change. It didn't take very long for the same corrupt “leaders” to be put right back in charge and those campaign promises rapidly reneged upon.

The corrupted system is desperately working to immunize itself from any future efforts for change if and when the star spangled sheep are ever able to wake up from their slumber and mount a challenge. The cybersecurity bill which is an extension of the NSA Stasi government power into private industry will ensure that any dissent will be rapidly squashed.

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.