Just received this:
Dear Internet Defense League member,
Last year, right on the heels of our historic victory against SOPA, a piece of really nasty legislation almost passed that would have radically undermined online privacy.
It was called CISPA. And it raced through the US House of Representatives, passing before any of us had a chance to react. We stalled the bill in the Senate, but now CISPA is back, and we don’t want to make the same mistake twice. Before there is *any* movement on the bill, we want to send a strong message to Congress that CISPA shouldn’t pass.
That’s why we’re partnering with the Electronic Frontier Foundation to launch an Internet Defense League action starting tomorrow, Tuesday March 19th.
Can you participate? If so, get the code for your site here: http://members.internetdefenseleague.org
And help get more people signed up by sharing this page with your social network:
Wait, what is CISPA? And why does it matter so much?
CISPA (the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act) would give companies complete freedom to share your personal data with the US government. It doesn’t *require* them to do so, but if the government asked it would be hard to say no, and they’d have no reason to– CISPA would free them from any promises made to customers in public statements or privacy policies.
Your emails, your Facebook account, your bank statements, the websites you visit, your real-time location (courtesy of your cellphone company)– all of it could soon belong to a slew of government agencies and even local police, who could use it against you without a warrant.
Get the code: http://members.internetdefenseleague.org
The IDL action will display only tomorrow. The banner looks like this: http://i.imgur.com/mVG9kVX.png The modal looks like this: http://i.imgur.com/tCOtoEC.png
And they both link to this action page hosted by the EFF: https://action.eff.org/o/9042/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=9048
Please spread the word.
Thanks! Sincerely,
Holmes Wilson – Internet Defense League
P.S. If you’d like to learn more about CISPA, the EFF has a great FAQ page here: https://www.eff.org/cybersecurity-bill-faq
Xanthippa's Chamberpot 
March 18, 2013 at 17:25
I think the chance of it passing in the US is 10%. The majority of the population is against it, especially liberal Democrats. And Obama knows that. Basically anyone who votes for it is committing political suicide.
Xanthippa says: let’s hope so.
Still, never underestimate the disconnect between popular opinion and what our politicials are willing to do. Many will think that a single issue sill not alter people’s party loyalty…
March 18, 2013 at 22:25
Xanthippa:
The real danger is that people are getting used to it.
Only a few years ago, people called me paranoid when I warned of ubiquitous surveillance, and came up with all kinds of fallacious reasons why it couldn’t or wouldn’t ever happen. Not here, anyway.
Now, they just shrug their shoulders and claim it’s too late to do anything about it.
The rhetoric has gone from denial to submission, but the motivation is the same: it absolves them from the responsibility to do anything about it. The culture of apathy, cowardice and narcissism is having its intended affect.
The same thing happened to our right to self-defence. For more than a generation now, the government has been trampling with increasing zeal on the right to act in self-defence. People have become so accustomed to the ever-tightening limitations on this fundamental right that they don’t even miss it anymore. Many can no longer imagine any other response to being attacked than helplessness and terror. The relevance of this is immediate:
Privacy is the information-age equivalent of self-defence.
This needs to be explicitly written into the constitution of every civilized nation.
Of course Canada doesn’t even recognize self-defence unequivocally. The best we get are some ill-defined weasel words about “security of the person” – and not a peep about how this is to be accomplished.
We need stronger legal language, making it crystal clear that the security of one’s person, privacy, and property are inextricably linked.
We need an explicit affirmation in the Charter of Rights that every person has the inalienable right to take whatever action he may deem necessary, using whatever means he may deem advisable, to defend the security of his own person, privacy, and property, as well as those of other people who may request or be in clear need of assistance.
Oh wait… first we need to write in the right to own property.
You see?
This is what happens when you take your eyes off the ball and let a bunch of conniving neo-liberals write your laws…
We can no longer be content to merely resist their relentless destruction.
We need to strengthen the structural members they have already weakened.
We must start rebuilding the foundations they have already undermined.
And we must do it now!
While there is still a political will among the people to see it done.
Xanthippa says:
Trudeau seniour had specifically left ‘prorety rights’ OUT of the Canadian constitution…it will be exceedingly difficult to have them recognized constitutionally…