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CISA, FBI resuming talks with social media firms over disinformation removal, Senate Intel chair says

May 10, 2024

CISA, FBI resuming talks with social media firms over disinformation removal, Senate Intel chair says

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va. (L) speaks with NightDragon Founder and CEO Dave DeWalt (R) at the 2024 RSA conference in San Francisco, California.

Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va. (L) speaks with NightDragon Founder and CEO Dave DeWalt (R) at the 2024 RSA conference in San Francisco, California. DAVID DIMOLFETTA/STAFF

The Senate Intelligence Committee will hold an election security hearing in two weeks, according to Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va.

SAN FRANCISCO — Key federal agencies have resumed discussions with social media companies over removing disinformation on their sites as the November presidential election nears, a stark reversal after the Biden administration for months froze communications with social platforms amid a pending First Amendment case in the Supreme Court, a top senator said Monday.

Mark Warner, D-Va., who chairs the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters in a briefing at RSA Conference that agencies restarted talks with social media companies as the Supreme Court heard arguments in Murthy v. Missouri, a case that first began in the Fifth Circuit appellate court last July. The case was fueled by allegations that federal agencies like the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency were coercing platforms to remove content related to vaccine safety and 2020 presidential election results.

The Supreme Court is expected to decide whether agencies are allowed to stay in touch with social media firms about potential disinformation. Missouri’s then-Attorney General Eric Schmitt filed the suit on the grounds that the Biden administration violated First Amendment rights pertaining to free speech online in a bid to suppress politically conservative voices.

According to Warner, communications between agencies and social platforms resumed roughly around the same time that multiple justices appeared to favor the executive branch’s stance on the issue, he said.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Six Signs That 2016 Will Be Much Worse Than 2015

December 22, 2015

Six Signs That 2016 Will Be Much Worse Than 2015 

A Turbulent Year

In the course of 2015 we have witnessed several events that had, and will have, negative repercussions on individual freedom. Orwellian totalitarianism is increasingly creeping into our everyday lives. How much more intrusive will the violations of our liberties become and for how long will the establishment get away with this? These are questions that remain unanswered.

YesWeScanUnited we move toward a perfectly monitored society – the US Congress has just passed the controversial CISA spying law – the worst possible version of it – by sneaking it into a budget bill. This utterly corrupt method of enacting laws that would not get passed on their own because they are such a huge affront to decency and civilization has become the norm in the “land of the free” – which ironically is “exporting democracy” by force of arms all over the world!

With regards to the financial system, no real solution was found to issues such as those in the euro zone. Furthermore, the financial system as a whole once again got deeper into debt. For how much longer can central banks and governments continue kicking the can down the road without any real reform? I will try to answer these questions and identify trends for 2016 by looking at six key issues that have had an impact this year.

  1. Geopolitical Developments 

We have witnessed a number of troubling geopolitical developments during this past year. From the continuing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, territorial disputes between Japan and China, the escalating proxy war in Syria, the refugee crisis in Europe, the rise of religious tensions all over world to the rise of the Islamic State, the world has become increasingly unstable.

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CISA: “Just Another Example Of Corruption”

December 21, 2015

CISA: “Just Another Example Of Corruption”

Last week, Congress passed CISA by hiding it in the middle of a sure-to-pass spending bill, and Obama signed it into law … even though the Department of Homeland Security had previously said that the bill will HURT national security and destroy privacy (numerous experts agreed).

And – just like with previous spying laws – the government has a secret interpretation of CISA which will make it even worse.

So why was the bill passed?

As the American public is starting to learn  – and politicians from both side of the aisle admit – corruption has thoroughly destroyed America.

The highest-level NSA whistleblower in history – William Binney – the high-level NSA executive who created the agency’s mass surveillance program for digital information, 36-year NSA veteran widely regarded as a “legend” within the agency, who served as the senior technical director within the agency, and managed thousands of NSA employees –  explains that corruption is what’s motivating mass surveillance against the American people … and it’s what’s making us vulnerable to terrorism.

Washington’s Blog asked Binney what he thought of CISA, and he said:

This is just another example of the White House, leadership (if you want to call it that) in Congress, the intelligence committees, and the intelligence agencies manipulating the system to get what they want (more money and more knowledge to control).

Clearly, CISA would not stand on it’s own; so, they had to sneak it through buried inside a massive funding bill at the end of the year.

Again, we see just another example of corruption in our government in Washington DC. They don’t have the courage or backbone to stand for what they want out in the open where there can be an honest debate like we are suppose to have in a democracy.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

CISA Is Now The Law: How Congress Quietly Passed The Second Patriot Act

December 18, 2015

CISA Is Now The Law: How Congress Quietly Passed The Second Patriot Act

Back in 2014, civil liberties and privacy advocates were up in arms when the government tried to quietly push through the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, or CISA, a law which would allow federal agencies – including the NSA – to share cybersecurity, and really any information with private corporations “notwithstanding any other provision of law.” The most vocal complaint involved CISA’s information-sharing channel, which was ostensibly created for responding quickly to hacks and breaches, and which provided a loophole in privacy laws that enabled intelligence and law enforcement surveillance without a warrant.

Ironically, in its earlier version, CISA had drawn the opposition of tech firms including Apple, Twitter, Reddit, as well as the Business Software Alliance, the Computer and Communications Industry Association and many others including countless politicians and, most amusingly, the White House itself.

In April, a coalition of 55 civil liberties groups and security experts signed onto an open letter opposing it. In July, the Department of Homeland Security itself warned that the bill could overwhelm the agency with data of “dubious value” at the same time as it “sweep[s] away privacy protections.” Most notably, the biggest aggregator of online private content, Facebook, vehemently opposed the legislation however a month ago it was “surprisingly” revealed that Zuckerberg had been quietly on the side of the NSA all along as we reported in “Facebook Caught Secretly Lobbying For Privacy-Destroying “Cyber-Security” Bill.”  

Even Snowden chimed in:

Edward Snowden ✔@Snowden

Shameful: @Facebook secretly backing Senate’s zombie surveillance bill while publicly pretending to oppose it. https://boingboing.net/2015/10/24/petition-facebook-betrayed-us.html …

5:43 PM – 25 Oct 2015

Following the blitz response, the push to pass CISA was tabled following a White House threat to veto similar legislation. Then, quietly, CISA reemerged after the same White House mysteriously flip-flopped, expressed its support for precisely the same bill in August.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

HOW BIG BUSINESS IS HELPING EXPAND NSA SURVEILLANCE, SNOWDEN BE DAMNED

April 2, 2015

HOW BIG BUSINESS IS HELPING EXPAND NSA SURVEILLANCE, SNOWDEN BE DAMNED

Since November 11, 2011, with the introduction of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, American spy agencies have been pushing laws to encourage corporations to share more customer information. They repeatedly failed, thanks in part to NSA contractor Edward Snowden’s revelations of mass government surveillance. Then came Republican victories in last year’s midterm Congressional elections and a major push by corporate interests in favor of the legislation.

Today, the bill is back, largely unchanged, and if congressional insiders and the bill’s sponsors are to believed, the legislation could end up on President Obama’s desk as soon as this month. In another boon to the legislation, Obama is expected to reverse his past opposition and sign it, albeit in an amended and renamed form (CISPA is now CISA, the “Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act”). The reversal comes in the wake of high-profile hacks on JPMorgan Chase and Sony Pictures Entertainment. The bill has also benefitted greatly from lobbying by big business, which sees it as a way to cut costs and to shift some anti-hacking defenses onto the government.

For all its appeal to corporations, CISA represents a major new privacy threat to individual citizens. It lays the groundwork for corporations to feed massive amounts of communications to private consortiums and the federal government, a scale of cooperation even greater than that revealed by Snowden. The law also breaks new ground in suppressing pushback against privacy invasions; in exchange for channeling data to the government, businesses are granted broad legal immunity from privacy lawsuits — potentially leaving consumers without protection if companies break privacy promises that would otherwise keep information out of the hands of authorities.

 

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