CISA is coming down to the wire

From Free Press:

The Senate is voting on the privacy-invading bill CISA today — and it's going to pass unless we make a lot of noise today.

We need to kill this bill before it’s too late. Pick up the phone and tell your senators to protect your online privacy.

I've got bad news — CISA is back.

Supporters claim that CISA is a cybersecurity bill, but in reality it's a cyber-surveillance bill. The bill encourages companies to monitor users and share our personal data with the government, under the guise of spotting vaguely-defined "threat indicators." In exchange, companies receive legal immunity from existing anti-surveillance laws, eliminating user privacy safeguards.

CISA will do absolutely nothing to protect us from cybersecurity threats. Security experts say that the bulk data sharing CISA allows actually makes it harder to identify real threats by decreasing the signal-to-noise ratio.

Cybersecurity is important, but this is not security. Instead, this is a dangerous surveillance bill that allows companies and federal agencies to freely share massive amounts of our personal data — without consequences.

Tell Congress: We're not buying the CISA charade.

Thanks for all that you do—

Dana, Sandy, and the rest of the Free Press Action Fund team
freepress.net

Find your Senators here

CISA could come to a vote at any minute in the Senate

From Fight For The Future:

Bad news.

Despite the fact that nearly every major tech company and security expert has come out against it, Congress is still rushing toward a vote on CISA, and the numbers are not looking good. The House Intelligence chief is claiming that CISA will pass “overwhelmingly,” despite the massive public outcry.

It pains me to say this, but CISA is going to become law unless we go all out right now and every single person getting this does everything in their power to stop it and their phones ring off the hook.

There’s just hours left to have an impact,tell your lawmakers to vote NO on CISA right now.

If you’re still catching up, CISA is the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, which is one of the most dangerous pieces of legislation in the Internet’s history. It sets the precedent for what the Internet is used for into the future. It would effectively give the government full access to all of our information to use as they wish, end privacy policies, and make all of us more vulnerable to cyber attacks.

CISA would allow spy agencies like the NSA to collect even more of your personal data and then share it with dozens of other government agencies, all the way down to local police, authorizing them to use it for an absurdly wide range of purposes that have nothing to do with “cybersecurity,” including investigating "fake" id's.

Worse, it will literally do nothing to stop the types of high profile cyber attacks that Congress is using to justify it. So we get less privacy AND less security, while giant companies like Target, Experian, and Sony will get legal immunity that lets them on the hook when they fail to protect our data.

There’s still a chance. We’ve won against these types of odds before. But everyone getting this needs to take action TODAY.

No matter what happens, we’ve put up a hell of a fight. Together we put the fear of the Internet into the largest tech companies in the U.S. and got them to take a stand against this bill. Now we need to bring it home.

We at Fight for the Future are working around the clock on this right now. Several of us are en route to Washington, DC as I write this and we’ll be participating in an awesome protest outside Congress TONIGHT at 6:30pm EST with giant light up signs.

Beyond making calls, if you’re in the DC area or know someone who is, go here to get the details and RSVP or spread the word by clicking here

Congress is hoping that they can sneak this bill through without a fight. We need to prove them wrong.

The final vote is days away. Click here to take action against CISA right now.

We can’t thank you enough for all you do. This is the free speech fight of our generation, and we’re proud to be with you on the frontlines.

For the Internet,
~ Evan, Tiffiniy, Holmes, Charlie, Jeff, Aki, Jessica, Vasjen, and Sarah
Fight for the Future

Join Senator Rand Paul in opposing CISA

From Campaign For Liberty:

The Senate intends to pass a new warrantless surveillance bill granting government broad new authorities for collecting your personal information from private businesses, and it's up to you and me to stop them.

On Wednesday the Senate may hold its first vote on the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA), S. 754.

Promoted as a "much-needed" "cybersecurity" bill, Congress devised a new way for intelligence agencies to collect your emails and sensitive data.

The bill "encourages" private companies like Google, Facebook, and Yahoo to monitor their networks and share "cyber threat indicators" broadly with agencies like the FBI, NSA, and CIA.

Worse yet, the bill allows the government to share and use your information for reasons completely unrelated to cybersecurity!

And on top of all that, this bill grants companies immunity to ensure they give the government as much information as possible...

Without having to make any effort to redact your sensitive information.

Let that sink in for a moment...

The same government that can't protect its own data on 22.1 million federal employees, contractors, and their families and friends wants private businesses to share your personal information freely with them.

And if (more likely, when) your information is misused either by government agencies, private businesses, or both, you will be unable to hold anyone accountable.

Ray, you and I can both see this isn't going to end well.

CISA is justified as necessary to stop hackers...

But sharing your Google searches and emails with Homeland Security will not stop hackers.

In fact, nothing in this bill would stop any of the cyber-attacks publicized in the press this year.

When it comes down to it, this is nothing more than a new warrantless surveillance bill.

Congress should be rolling back intelligence agencies' surveillance powers, not granting new ones.

Recently, the President of the American Library Association, Sari Feldman, spoke out against the bill saying,

"When librarians oppose a bill with 'information sharing' in its name you can be sure that the bill is decidedly more than advertised."

Businesses like Twitter, Yelp, Facebook, and Google all oppose this bill.

You only need to look at who is sponsoring this bill to realize it isn't for your benefit or mine.

Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Richard Burr (R-NC), two of the biggest surveillance state proponents in the Senate, are working diligently to ram this legislation through.

And that makes the first potential vote on Wednesday crucial.

Per standing Senate rules, the Senate needs 60 votes to proceed on the bill.

Senators Rand Paul (R-KY), Ron Wyden (D-OR), and Bernie Sanders (I-VT), have all vocally opposed this legislation.

But it's going to take an outpouring of opposition from grassroots Americans like you to stop this warrantless surveillance bill from passing the Senate.

That's why it's vital you sign your emergency "Stop the Surveillance State!" Fax Petitions to your U.S. Senators today.

These petitions let your senators know you see right through the thin façade of "cybersecurity" and recognize this bill for what it is - a new warrantless surveillance bill.

At a time when Congress needs to do more to rein in the intelligence agencies to protect your privacy, many senators are trying to expand the surveillance state.

Let them know you'll have nothing of it.

Please take action today, then forward this email to your friends and family and ask them to sign their emergency "Stop the Surveillance State!" Fax Petitions as well.

Public pressure matters. And if you remain silent, don't look to blame others later for your lost liberties.

It's time the American people stand up and say, "Enough is enough!"

In Liberty,

Tim Shoemaker
Director of Legislation

To sign the petition

CISA,the internet freedom killing and good bye to your privacy bill,is up for a vote in Congress

From Fight For The Future:

This is the week. Congress is about to create a seismic rupture in the Internet.

CISA is coming up for final vote sometime today or tomorrow. If it passes, we'll be more vulnerable to hacks as companies shift responsibility for preventing them away to the government. Companies will continue to leave the door open for thieves to get your information, including your bank information and Social Security number. On top of that, all your data will be automatically shared with 7 government agencies, including the NSA and local police.

They're trying to ignore that millions of people have already called on Congress to stop CISA. And, that they have no business passing it.

This week, we have to show them again. Tell Congress to vote NO on CISA now.

The other side wants us to get sick of taking action. They want to wear us down until we give up. We can't give up at this final juncture. The Intelligence Committee, full of the Congresspeople who take the most money from the Defense Industry, is hell bent on passing a “cybersecurity” bill in some form. They don't care what it does or says, even if it means creating more vulnerabilities across the Internet and breaking it.

This is corruption. The Defense industry cares about profit as much as the next industry. But, their pockets are very, very deep. They've bought out politicians to do their bidding. That's why it's convenient that Congress doesn't understand the Internet and doesn't know how to address cyber hacks.

Instead of making sure companies use good security, Congress is convinced they should install a massive

surveillance law to watch for hacks. Even security experts have roundly condemned the bill for its ineffectiveness, but Congress is so corrupted they don't care or don't understand that it won't work.

That's why they need to hear how inept they are, or they'll never stop. If thousands of you rally and tell them to stop their corrupt bill CISA now, we can stop it and set a precedent for the future. Take action now.

Just a few month ago, things were looking really grim. It seemed almost certain that CISA would pass, but since then we've unleashed a huge can of whoopass and our campaigns have led to nearly every major tech company in the U.S. speaking out to oppose this bill. Trade groups that represent Google, Facebook, Amazon, Sprint have come out against CISA. Twitter, Yelp, Wikipedia came out opposed too, thanks to you and all the grassroots pressure.

And, we're organizing the Internet Defense League and thousands of sites to take action this week to stop the bill. If you have a website, click here to join in! (Or join with your twitter here.)

We've done all this work because surveillance is the defining issue in our digital age.

We're in a moment when our data and privacy have become currency. Governments and corporations are fighting over what to do with it, how to pass laws that let them reap profit and power off of it, even when it's abusive, criminal, or unconstitutional.

We have to make the line in the sand clear. Our data must be protected and can't be used against us.

That's what we're demanding by stopping CISA, and that's what we have to keep fighting for.

Tell Congress to oppose CISA

CISPA is back only know it is known as CISA

From Fight For The Future:

CISA: the dirty deal between government and corporate giants.

It's the dirty deal that lets much of government from the NSA to local police get your private data from your favorite websites and lets them use it without due process.

The government is proposing a massive bribe—they will give corporations immunity for breaking virtually any law if they do so while providing the NSA, DHS, DEA, and local police surveillance access to everyone's data in exchange for getting away with crimes, like fraud, money laundering, or illegal wiretapping.

Specifically it incentivizes companies to automatically and simultaneously transfer your data to the DHS, NSA, FBI, and local police with all of your personally-indentifying information by giving companies legal immunity (notwithstanding any law), and on top of that, you can't use the Freedom of Information Act to find out what has been shared.

The NSA and members of Congress want to pass a "cybersecurity" bill so badly, they’re using the recent hack of the Office of Personnel Management as justification for bringing CISA back up and rushing it through. In reality, the OPM hack just shows that the government has not been a good steward of sensitive data and they need to institute real security measures to fix their problems. The truth is that CISA could not have prevented
the OPM hack, and no Senator could explain how it could have. Congress and the NSA are using irrational hysteria to turn the Internet into a place where the government has overly broad, unchecked powers.

Why Faxes?

Since 2012, online and civil liberties groups and 30,000+ sites have driven more than 2.6 million emails and hundreds of thousands of calls, tweets and more to Congress opposing overly broad cybersecurity legislation. Congress has tried to pass CISA in one form or another 4 times, and they were beat back every time by people like you. It's clear Congress is completely out of touch with modern technology, so this week, as Congress rushes toward a vote on CISA, we are going to send them thousands of faxes, a technology from the 1980s that is hopefully antiquated enough for them to understand.

Sending a fax is super easy — you can use this page to send a fax. Any tweet with the hashtag #faxbigbrother will get turned into a fax to Congress too, so what are you waiting for? Click here

Sourceclick here

CISA would give the NSA more information about you,sign the petition if you oppose this.

From Fight For The Future:

Over the weekend a detailed report in the Washington Post caught the U.S. government in more lies about the scope of its dragnet surveillance programs. The Post showed that the NSA intercepted communications from ordinary people 9 times more often than from “targets” suspected of any wrongdoing.

People are outraged. And we should be. Any politician that plans to keep their job should be doing everything they can to put an end to these illegal and unethical surveillance practices.

Infuriatingly, *today* the Senate Intelligence Committee is rushing to advance “CISA,” a bill that would give the NSA more access to our data than ever before, and give companies like Facebook and Google legal immunity for violating our privacy.

Your signature is needed to stop CISA, the new CISPA. Will you click here to take action right now? Every second counts, the markup is this afternoon.

Does “CISA” sound kind of familiar? That’s because it’s another zombified version of CISPA, a bill that Internet users have beaten back twice before.

It’s despicable that the Senate Intelligence Committee, who are supposed to oversee the government’s spying programs and protect our rights, is choosing this moment to resurrect CISPA, and sneaking it through in a closed door markup.

Thanks to the huge rise in privacy activism and reporting over the past year, it should be easier than ever to defeat legislation like this. But we have to remain vigilant. Congress is trying to do this quietly; we can’t let them. Take action right now.

-Evan at Fight for the Future

1) Barton Gellman, Julie Tate, and Ashkan Soltani. The Washington Post. In NSA-intercepted data those not targeted far outnumber the foreigners who are. click here

2) Senate Select Comittee on Intelligence schedule: click here

3) Office of Senator Dianne Feinsten. CISA bill text:click here