Obama secretly signs the most aggressive cybersecurity directive ever

Photo: Reuters/Rick Wilking

Source: Russia Today

Six years after the White House first started running amok on the computer networks of its adversaries, US President Barack Obama has signed off on a top-secret order that finally offers blueprints for the Pentagon’s cyberwars.

Pres. Obama has autographed an executive order outlining protocol and procedures for the US military to take in the name of preventing cyberattacks from foreign countries, the Washington Post reports, once and for all providing instructions from the Oval Office on how to manage the hush-hush assaults against opposing nation-states that have all been confirmed by the White House while at the same time defending America from any possible harm from abroad.

According to Post’s sources, namely “officials who have seen the classified document and are not authorized to speak on the record,” Pres. Obama signed the paperwork in mid-October. Those authorities explain to the paper that the initiative in question, Presidential Policy Directive 20, “establishes a broad and strict set of standards to guide the operations of federal agencies in confronting threats in cyberspace.”

Confronting a threat may sound harmless, but begs to introduce a chicken-and-the-egg scenario that could have some very serious implications. The Post describes the directive as being “the most extensive White House effort to date to wrestle with what constitutes an ‘offensive’ and a ‘defensive’ action in the rapidly evolving world of cyberwar and cyberterrorism,” but the ambiguous order may very well allow the US to continue assaulting the networks of other nations, now with a given go-ahead from the commander-in-chief. Next in line, the Post says, will be rules of engagement straight from the Pentagon that will provide guidelines for when to carry out assaults outside the realm of what is considered ‘American’ in terms of cyberspace.

“What it does, really for the first time, is it explicitly talks about how we will use cyber operations,” one senior administration official tells the paper of the policy directive. “Network defense is what you’re doing inside your own networks. . . . Cyber operations is stuff outside that space, and recognizing that you could be doing that for what might be called defensive purposes.”

When The New York Times published an exposé on the White House’s so-called Olympics Games program earlier this year, the world became fully aware for once of America’s involvement in international cyberwar, but much to the chagrin of Washington. Officials including members of Pres. Obama’s national security team spoke on condition of anonymity to tell the Times that his predecessor, then-Pres. George W. Bush, began the program in 2006 to target Iran’s nuclear facilities and then passed it along to the current administration to continue under the leadership of the current commander-in-chief.

“From his first months in office,” David Sanger wrote for the Times, Pres. Obama “secretly ordered increasingly sophisticated attacks on the computer systems that run Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facilities, significantly expanding America’s first sustained use of cyberweapons.”

Congress has fought tooth-and-nail in the months since to plug any leaks that could potentially spill the beans regarding any further secrets with the potential of effecting national security, but those efforts appear unsuccessful given this week’s Post report on Presidential Police Directive 20.

Now take the example of Iran: according to the Post, Pres. Obama’s signature on last month’s directive means the US now has rules and regulations when it comes to protecting its own infrastructure from cyberattack, and can do so by means of launching what appear to be pre-emptive assaults of their own.

“It should enable people to arrive at more effective decisions,” a second senior administration official tells the Post. “In that sense, it’s an enormous step forward.”

That comment echoes US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta’s insistence earlier this year that “defense alone is not enough” in terms of keeping the country safe. But what it also seems to do is put on the books a presidential policy that equates an overzealous offense with a solid defense. While the US has cited Iranian hackers as the key players behind a recent attack on the websites of Capital One Financial Corp. and BB&T Corp., two of the biggest names in the American banking industry, the US has done little — on the record — to reveal any similar assaults from abroad. Instead, rather, it’s relied on fear-mongering to try and convince the country to accept a cybersecurity legislation that will assure American’s safety from foreign hackers, all for the small price of sacrificing their digital-age privacy.

While the Obama White House has failed to acknowledge the Olympic Games program or any involvement in the Stuxnet or Flames viruses linked to the initiative, computer researchers in both the US and Russia have tied Washington to the cripplingly malicious coding. Earlier this month, California-based Chevron, one of the world’s leaders in the oil sector, went public with claims that Stuxnet had infected — but not affected — their computers after the virus was unleashed.

The ability to slow down or speed up centrifuges in nuclear facilities from thousands of miles away made Stuxnet a virus that had very substantial powers. Refusing to speak of the Olympic Games program specifically, former CIA chief Michael Hayden told the Times, “This is the first attack of a major nature in which a cyberattack was used to effect physical destruction.”

According to the Post’s latest, though, future assaults by way of Stuxnet or similar worms could be considered by Washington as defense mechanisms to make sure Iran doesn’t retaliate for what America has long-been lashing out with. One source tells the Times that, before last month’s directive, severing any link between a US-computer and an overseas server by any means possible would be an act that would put America on the offensive. Now even a preemptive attack that disconnects other countries could be considered a defensive ploy according to the president.

“That was seen as something that was aggressive…particularly by some at the State Department,” one defense official tells the Post. With the signing of Pres. Obama’s latest order, though, the paper writes that the directive “effectively enables the military to act more aggressively to thwart cyberattacks on the nation’s web of government and private computer networks.”

It is thought that, through the directive, any systems linked even remotely with America’s can be fair game for an assault. Given the expansion of cloud computing and the ever-expanding interconnection of communities across the globe on the Web, though, that could essentially enable Uncle Sam’s cybersquad to get away with a whole new slew of tricks to try and topple adversaries of any kind that threaten the American way of life. When and where those actions are necessary, of course, remains another topic of discussion. Will those orders be signed in secrecy as well, though?

NSA’s secretive surveillance program goes to the Supreme Court

 

The US Supreme Court (AFP Photo / Karen Bleier / Files)

Source: Russia Today

http://rt.com/usa/news/surveillance-fisa-supreme-wiretap-324/

The US government insists that Americans don’t have the right to challenge a law that lets the National Security Agency eavesdrop on the intimate communications of anyone in the country, but all of that could now change as early as next week.

The Supreme Court will officially start their second session of the year on Monday, and first on the agenda is a matter that could eventually shatter the government’s ability to order wiretaps on the emails and phones of any US citizen without ever obtaining a warrant.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was put into place in the 1970s to install safeguards to keep Americans safe from unlawful eavesdropping. Following the terrorist attacks of September 11, though, the George W. Bush administration ordered amendments to the law that have ever since allowed the NSA to monitor the communications of any US citizen as long as the government suspects that they are corresponding with anyone outside of the country.

Last month, the US House of Representatives voted to reauthorize the 2008 FISA Amendment Act (FAA), but not without attracting criticism from some very concerned parties. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a legal brief warning, “Under the FAA, the government can target anyone — human rights researchers, academics, attorneys, political activists, journalists — simply because they are foreigners outside the United States, and in the course of its surveillance it can collect Americans’ communications with those individuals.”

Beside from the obvious opposition to the warrantless wiretapping of any American with no explanation, there’s another problem that has put the FAA in the spotlight. The Justice Department has insisted that Americans can’t challenge the eavesdropping provisions because no civilians can say with absolute certainty that they have been targeted by secret surveillance.

The reason Americans can’t prove they’ve been monitored, of course, is because the government won’t give them yes or no answer anytime they’ve been asked.

Each time the question comes up over who has been targeted, the government has defaulted to say that national security prohibits them from disclosing who’s been subjected to NSA spying, claiming state secret privilege to prevent disclosing even the bare bones of their wiretapping program. When two US senators asked the Office of the Inspector General of the Intelligence Community earlier this year, “how many people inside the United States have had their communications collected or reviewed under the authorities granted by section 702” of the FAA, the NSA fired back by saying even responding to that inquiry would be against their rules.

A “review of the sort suggested would itself violate the privacy of US persons,” Inspector General I. Charles McCullough wrote, adding that the request would be “beyond the capacity” of his office and that “dedicating sufficient additional resources would likely impede the NSA’s mission.”

“The overwhelming power of the state secrets privilege makes it nearly impossible for any US citizen to show that he or she was the subject of surveillance, while the inability to prove he or she has been spied on prevents any citizen from having standing to challenge the program,” Frank Matt explains the case this week for the Arab American Institute.

But although the NSA won’t come close to offering any details, the texts of the FISA amendments open up literally any American citizen to government surveillance as long as their emails, phone calls or instant messages are sent to someone abroad, whether it’s a cousin in Canada or an employee working overseas.

“Rather than target its surveillance power at a specific person thought to be the agent of a foreign power, the government can target its surveillance power at a group of people, a neighborhood, a country or a geographic region,” the ACLU insists.

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) argued on the Hill last month against reauthorizing the FAA, telling his colleagues in Congress, “Everyone becomes suspect when big brother is listening.” Now before any Americans can try to say that the surveillance allowed under those 2008 amendments violate the US Constitution, they need to convince the court that they should be able to bring the matter up.

On Monday, the Supreme Court will hear oral arguments regarding Clapper v. Amnesty International, a case being fought to show that opponents of the FAA have a right to bring their suit up in Washington. Those that call the warrantless wiretapping illegal will have a hard case to fight, though, given that they can’t prove they’ve been watched.

“Unfortunately, the government has tried to block the courts from ever reaching that constitutionalissue, arguing that unless the plaintiffs can prove they will be monitored (which is impossible, since the list of who is monitored is classified), they cannot sue,” former NSA agents-turned-whistleblowers Bill Binney and J. Kirk Wiebe write in an op-ed published in Politico this week.

The US Second Circuit has already ruled in Clapper that the plaintiffs — attorneys, journalists and activists from human rights organizations — should be able to challenge the constitutionally of those amendments. Because those parties cannot prove that they’ve been personally subjected to the surveillance, though, it has been an uphill battle all the while.

The Brennan Center for Justice out of the New York University Law School notes, “given the nature of their professional work,” the Second Circuit previously ruled that the plaintiffs had “a reasonable fear that they were in fact subject to such surveillance and had to take costly steps to protect the confidentiality of their communications.” That’s enough, they say, to show that the plaintiffs “satisfied the required showing of a concrete injury resulting from the challenged amendments sufficient to establish standing to sue and reversed the contrary finding of the district court.”

“Because the identity of persons subject to surveillance is a government secret, it is highly unlikely that any US persons could ever show that they were in fact the subject of such surveillance. Accordingly, if the plaintiffs-respondents in this case do not have standing, it is likely that serious questions as to whethersurveillance conducted under the 2008 amendments violate the First and Fourth Amendments will escape review altogether,” the center adds.

On their part, the ACLU agrees that the plaintiffs have good reason to believe that they’ve been monitored under the 2008 amendments. “Some plaintiffs communicate with people who have been the targets of surveillance or other US government attention in the past,” the ACLU wrote in last month’s brief, specifically bringing up clients whose jobs require them to, for example, communicate with indigenous rights advocates in Columbia, or corresponds with former CIA detainees for human rights research.

The ACLU adds that an appeals court panel already agreed in 2011 that “plaintiffs have good reason to believe that their communications, in particular, will fall within the scope of the broad surveillance that they can assume the government will conduct,” and the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit later refused the government’s attempts to reverse that decision. Now if the Supreme Court can come to the same conclusion, those plaintiffs — the ones who may or may not have ever been surveilled — can finally challenge the constitutionality of the FISA amendments.

“While it may seem like a minor step in the battle against the abuses of FISA, the outcome of this case could have profound implications for future civil liberties cases,” Frank Matt adds in his article this week. equating the government’s defense of the FAA as “Kafkaesque resistance.”

“Based on our combined six-plus decades of experience working at the NSA, we are sure there is only one just outcome,” Binney and Wiebe write to Politico. “The justices should let this case proceed, giving the courts the opportunity to determine whether the executive and legislative branches have gone too far.”

“The NSA cannot be trusted with this power. No agency should be.”

Third anarchist jailed for refusing to testify before secret grand jury

Leah Plante (Image from leahxvx.tumblr.com)

Source: Russia Today

http://rt.com/usa/news/refusing-grand-jury-plante-196/

A third self-described anarchist from the Pacific Northwest has been jailed by federal officials for refusing to speak before a secretive grand jury that the accused have called a politically-motivated modern-day witch-hunt.

Leah-Lynn Plante, a mid-20s activist from Seattle, Washington, was ushered out of court by authorities on Wednesday after refusing for a third time to answer questions forced on her by a grand jury — a panel of prosecutors convened to determine if an indictment can be issued for a federal crime.

Plante was one of a handful of people targeted in a series of raids administered by the FBI and the Joint Terrorism Task Force on July 25 of this year which the feds say were in conjunction with an investigation into acts of vandalism that occurred during May Day protests in Seattle nearly two months prior. As part of their probe, search warrants were issued at multiple residences of activists in the area, including Plante’s, demanding that dwellers provide agents with “anti-government or anarchist literature” in their homes and any flags, flag-making material, cell phones, hard drives, address books, and black clothing.

“As if they had taken pointers from Orwell’s 1984, they took books, artwork and other various literature as ‘evidence’ as well as many other personal belongings even though they seemed to know that nobody there was even in Seattle on May Day,” Plante recalls in a post published this week to her Tumblr page.

Only one week after the raid, Neil Fox of the National Lawyers Guild told Seattle Times that raids like this are create a “chilling effect” by going after lawful, constitutionally-allowed private possessions.

“It concerns us any time there are law-enforcement raids that target political literature, First Amendment-protected materials,” Fox said.

This week Plante still maintains her innocence, now she has reason to believe that the raid that has left her suffering from post-traumatic stress syndrome may have been more than an investigation into an activity, but an ideology. Plante says a Freedom of Information Act request she filed in the months after her apartment door was broken down by armed officials reveals that the grand jury investigating her was first convened in March, two months before the vandalism she is being accused of even occurred.

“They are trying to investigate anarchists and persecute them for their beliefs. This is a fishing expedition. This is a witch hunt,” she says this week.

On the day of her third meeting with the grand jury on Wednesday, Plante wrote on her blog that she’d almost certainly be jailed on charges of contempt for refusing once again to testify about herself but said she was willing to face the consequences for exercising her right to remain silent.

“I do not look forward to what inevitably awaits me today, but I accept it,” she writes. “My convictions are unwavering and will not be shaken by their harassment. Today is October 10th, 2012 and I am ready to go to prison.”

Hours later, her Tumblr was updated with a note authored by one of her supporters confirming that Plante “was thrown into prison for civil contempt” after her court date. Plante is now the third anarchist to be imprisoned in the last month for refusing to answer questions about their belief and behavior before a grand jury.

Last month, Plante spoke openly about the grand jury before refusing their questioning for only her second time. “I believe that these hearings are politically motivated,” she wrote in a September 16 statement. “The government wants to use them to collect information that it can use in a campaign of repression. I refuse to have any part of it, I will never answer their questions, I will never speak.”

“While I hate the very idea of prison, I am ready to face it in order to stay true to my personal beliefs. I know that they want to kidnap me and isolate me from my friends and my loved ones in an effort to coerce me to speak. It will not work. I know that if I am taken away, I will not be alone.”

Katherine “KteeO” Olejnik, a fellow anarchist from the Seattle area, was taken into federal custody on September 28 for refusing to cooperate with a grand jury, a decision she said was based on humanity and her First Amendment protections.

“I cannot and will not say something that could greatly harm a person’s life, and providing information that could lead to long term incarceration would be doing that,” Olejnik wrote before being booked. “Icannot and will not be a party to a McCarthyist policy that is asking individuals to condemn each other based on political beliefs.”

On the No Political Repression blog, a support of Olejnik writes that she was prohibited from taking notes during her time on the stand, during which she says she resisted questioning.

Days before her imprisonment began, Matt Duran was also jailed for contempt. According to his attorneys, Duran was not only imprisoned by placed in solitary confinement, denied intimate contact with his lawyer, denied visitor requests forms, personal dietary requirements and sunlight an fresh air.

US Congress approves extension of secret surveillance under FISA

 

U.S. Capitol.(AFP Photo / Win McNamee)

Source: Russia Today

http://rt.com/usa/news/congress-surveillance-act-fisa-980/

The House of Representatives voted Wednesday to extend the government’s power to warrantlessly wiretap Americans for another five years by reauthorizing the 2008 amendments to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act.

Lawmakers in the House agreed from Washington, DC on Wednesday afternoon to reauthorize the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act’s Amendments Act of 2008 (FAA), a polarizing legislation that has been challenged by privacy advocates and civil liberties organizations alike around the country. The extension was approved by a vote of 301 to 118.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was first signed into law in 1978 by President Jimmy Carter, but amendments added two decades later under the George W Bush administration provide for the government to conduct widespread and blanketing snooping of emails and phone calls of Americans. The FISA Amendments added in 2008, specifically section 702, specify that the government can eavesdrop on emails and phone calls sent from US citizens to persons reasonably suspected to be located abroad without ever requiring intelligence officials to receive a court order.

If the US Senate echoes the House’s extension of the act, the FAA will carry through for another five years until 2017, ensuring the federal intelligence community that they will be able to conduct surveillance on the correspondence of the country’s own citizens well into the future. If no action is taken, the FAA is slated to expire at the end of 2012.

Earlier this year, a plea from two US senators to see how many times the FAA has been used was refused by the National Security Administration. Last month, San Francisco’s Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a lawsuit against the US Justice Department for failing to adhere to Freedom of Information Act requests for documents pertaining to the program.

“The FISA Amendments Act (FAA) of 2008 gave the NSA expansive power to spy on Americans' international email and telephone calls,” the EFF explained in an official statement made after the suit was filed. “However, last month, in a letter to Senator Ron Wyden, a government official publicly disclosed that the NSA's surveillance had gone even further than what the law permits, with the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) issuing at least one ruling calling the NSA's actions unconstitutional.”

Sen. Wyden, a Democratic lawmaker from Oregon who has also sit on the Senate intelligence committee for several years, originally asked for Senate to place a hold on the vote this past June. This week, Sen. Wyden tells Reuters, "My hold is on and it will stay on," although that plea does not apply to the House, however, where lawmakers appeared eager on Wednesday to power through the vote.

So determined were some lawmakers to proceed, in fact, that the rules of the debates preceding Wednesday’s vote called for no more than one hour of discussion before ballots were cast. Several congressmen, including lawmakers that planned to vote yes on the FAA extension regardless, proposed a two year extension as a compromise, but no new amendments were allowed to be tacked on before Wednesday’s vote.

Despite opposition on and off the Hill, the FAA has received praise from some of Washington’s most elite members of the government, including Attorney General Eric Holder and long-standing lawmaker Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX), the sponsor of the FAA renewal who also infamously urged Congress to approve the since-defeated Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA, a broad and dangerous Internet legislation that threatened to reshape the Web as we know it.

In his address at Northwestern University School of Law this past March, Mr. Holder said section 702 of the FAA “ensures that the government has the flexibility and agility it needs to identify and to respond to terrorist and other foreign threats to our security,” but emphasized the fact that only persons thought to be outside the US — not Americans — can be targeted. When Sens. Wyden and Udall asked to know how often that snooping involved Americans at all, however, they were told by the NSA’s Inspector General that a “review of the sort suggested would itself violate the privacy of US persons.”

On his part, Sen. Wyden has written, “that if no one has even estimated how many Americans have had their communications collected under the FISA Amendments Act . . . Then it is possible that this number could be quite large.”

“Since all of the communications collected by the government under section 702 are collected without individual warrants, I believe that there should be clear rules prohibiting the government from searching through these communications in an effort to find the phone calls or emails of a particular American, unless the government has obtained a warrant or emergency authorization permitting surveillance of that American,” the lawmaker wrote in an official press release earlier this year.

Rep. Smith, the sponsor of both this bill and SOPA, has said, “We have a duty to ensure the intelligence community can gather the intelligence they need to protect our country.”

On Thursday, Rep. Smith claimed, “Foreign nations continue to spy on America to plot cyber-attacks and attempt to steal sensitive information from our military and private sector industries,” and that Congress has “a solemn responsibility to ensure that the intelligence community can gather the information” necessary to hinder these attempts.

Rep. Dan Lungren (R-California) added on Wednesday from the Hill that reauthorizing the FAA is “critical to the protection of the American people,” claiming that the United States, “as a nation had not done enough to connect the dots to warn us sufficiently to protect” against another terrorist attack on par with the ones that devastated America on September 11, 2001.

Rep. Trey Gowdy, a Republican congressman from South Carolina, also used the attack on the Twin Towers to justify the necessity of extending the FAA.

“If we could come together to remember 9/11, surely we can come together to prevent another one,”

said Rep. Gowdy.

Opponents of the act, however, say that the attempts to do as such come at a cost too great for civil liberties.

“We’ve been told that we can’t even tell how many people are being subjected to this process located in the United States, and that we don’t know and they can’t tell us,” Rep. John Conyers (D-Michigan ) pleaded earlier this year in opposition to the act. “I think we can get a little bit closer. There can be some reasonableness. It’s this kind of vagueness that creates in those of us in the Congress, suspicions that are negative rather than suspicions that are positive.”

“Why can't we know how many people are affected by FISA amendment act in the US?” Rep Conyers asked. “This kind of vagueness creates suspicions.”

Former Democratic presidential hopeful Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) said on his own part that those suspicions are even more validated since the Justice Department has declined to adhere to a Freedom of Information Act request for information on the FAA, explaining on Wednesday, “Everyone becomes suspect when big brother is listening.”

Rep Hank Johnson (D-GA) also threw his weight behind efforts to reject the act on Wednesday, saying it the FISA amendments allow for “illegal surveillance of an untold number of American citizens” with absolutely no oversight.

“Not even the NSA knows the extent to which FISA amendment acts have potentially been approved,” Rep Earl Blumenhauser (D-Oregon) added from the House floor before the vote.

The American Civil Liberties Union reports that, every day, the NSA intercepts and stores around 1.7 billion emails, phone calls, text and other electronic communications thanks to laws like FISA. To put it into perspective, they add, “that’s equivalent to 138 million books, every 24 hours.”

“After four years, you’d hope that some basic information or parameters of such a massive spying program would be divulged to the public, or at least your rank-and-file member of Congress, but they haven’t,” says Michelle Richardson, a counsel at the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office. “Only a small handful of members have either personally attended classified briefings or have staff with high enough clearances to attend for them.Sen. Ron Wyden — who has been on the Senate Intelligence Committee for years—has even been stonewalled by the Obama administration for a year and a half in his attempts to learn basic information about the program, such as the number of Americans who have had their communications intercepted under the FAA.”

“Can you believe that 435 members of Congress who have sworn to uphold the Constitution are about to vote on a sweeping intelligence gathering law without this basic information?” she asks.

Obama fights ban on indefinite detention of Americans

(AFP Photo / Paul J. Richards)

Source: Russia Today

http://rt.com/usa/news/obama-indefinite-detention-forrest-070/

The White House has filed an appeal in hopes of reversing a federal judge’s ruling that bans the indefinite military detention of Americans because attorneys for the president say they are justified to imprison alleged terrorists without charge.

Manhattan federal court Judge Katherine Forrest ruled in May that the indefinite detention provisions signed into law late last year by US President Barack Obama failed to “pass constitutional muster” and ordered a temporary injunction to keep the military from locking up any person, American or other, over allegations of terrorist ties. On Monday, however, federal prosecutors representing President Obama and Defense Secretary Leon Panetta filed a claim with the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals in hopes of eliminating that ban.

The plaintiffs "cannot point to a single example of the military's detaining anyone for engaging in conduct even remotely similar to the type of expressive activities they allege could lead to detention," Obama’s attorneys insist. With that, the White House is arguing that as long as the indefinite detention law hasn’t be enforced yet, there is no reason for a judge to invalidate it.

Reuters reports this week that the government believes they are justified to have the authorization to lock alleged belligerents up indefinitely because cases involving militants directly aligned against the good of the US government warrants such punishment. Separate from Judge Forrest’s injunction, nine states have attempted to, at least in part, remove themselves from the indefinite detention provisions of included in the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2012, or NDAA.

In section 1021 of the NDAA, the president’s authority to hold a terrorism suspect “without trial, until the end of the hostilities” is reaffirmed by Congress. Despite an accompanying signing statement voicing his opposition to that provision, President Obama quietly inked his name to the NDAA on December 31, 2011. In May, however, a group of plaintiffs including notable journalists and civil liberty proponents challenged section 1021 in court, leading to Just Forrest to find it unconstitutional one month later.

"There is a strong public interest in protecting rights guaranteed by the First Amendment," Forrest wrote in her 68-page ruling. "There is also a strong public interest in ensuring that due process rights guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment are protected by ensuring that ordinary citizens are able to understand the scope of conduct that could subject them to indefinite military detention."

At the time Just Forrest made her injunction, attorney Carl Mayer told RT on behalf of the plaintiffs that, although he expected the White House to appeal, “It may not be in their best interest.”

“[T]here are so many people from all sides of the political spectrum opposed to this law that they ought to just say, 'We're not going to appeal,’” Mayer said. "The NDAA cannot be used to pick up Americans in a proverbial black van or in any other way that the administration might decide to try to get people into the military justice system. It means that the government is foreclosed now from engaging in this type of action against the civil liberties of Americans."

The original plaintiffs, who include Pulitzer Prize-winner Chris Hedges, have asked Just Forrest to make her injunction permanent. Oral arguments in the case are expected to begin this week.

House panel approves Magnitsky sanctions on Russia

Source: Press TV (US Desk)
http://www.presstv.ir/usdetail/245073.html

A congressional committee unanimously approved on Thursday a measure to penalize Russian officials for human rights abuses, adding to tensions with Moscow and complicating White House efforts to pass Russian trade legislation in the coming months.

The House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee approved on a voice vote the "Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Law Accountability Act," named for a 37-year-old anti-corruption lawyer who worked for the equity fund Hermitage Capital. His 2009 death after a year in Russian jails spooked investors and blackened Russia's image abroad.

The measure has bipartisan support among lawmakers but its prospects for passage in Congress remain uncertain.

The measure would require the United States to deny visas and freeze the assets of Russians linked to Magnitsky's death. The Obama administration already has imposed visa restrictions on some Russians believed to have been involved in Magnitsky's death, but kept their names quiet.

The bill would make public the list of alleged offenders, broaden it to include other abusers of human rights in Russia and prohibit them from doing their banking in U.S. institutions.

Russian officials have warned that the bill would harm American-Russian relations, and U.S. business groups say it could hurt their interests in Russia. Chicago Tribune

HIGHLIGHTS

A bill to punish Russian officials for alleged human rights abuses would badly damage U.S.-Russian ties and hurt U.S. exports, American business groups have said. Washington Post

Bill Reinsch, president of the National Foreign Trade Council, whose members include major U.S. exporters such as Boeing, Microsoft and Caterpillar, told reporters Tuesday that the Magnitsky legislation was “seriously flawed.” Foreign Policy

If Congress does not remove Russia from Jackson-Vanik, Moscow could under WTO rules potentially deny U.S. exporters some of the market-opening concessions it made to join the WTO. Reuters

U.S. companies also fear that they will lose sales because Moscow will retaliate by turning to other suppliers. Reuters

Seeds of doubt: Brazilian farmers sue Monsanto

Machines lined up before harvesting soybeans at a farm in Tangara da Serra in Cuiaba, Brazil (Reuters / Paulo Whitaker)

Source: Russia Today
http://www.rt.com/news/monsanto-brazil-seed-soy-908/

Five million Brazilian farmers are locked in a lawsuit with US-based biotech giant Monsanto, suing for as much as 6.2 billion euros. They say that the genetic-engineering company has been collecting royalties on crops it unfairly claims as its own.

The farmers claim that Monsanto unfairly collects exorbitant profits every year worldwide on royalties from “renewal” seed harvests. “Renewal” crops are those that have been planted using seed from the previous year’s harvest. While the practice of renewal farming is an ancient one, Monsanto disagrees, demanding royalties from any crop generation produced from its genetically-engineered seed. Because the engineered seed is patented, Monsanto not only charges an initial royalty on the sale of the crop produced, but a continuing 2 per cent royalty on every subsequent crop, even if the farmer is using a later generation of seed.

"Monsanto gets paid when it sell the seeds. The law gives producers the right to multiply the seeds they buy and nowhere in the world is there a requirement to pay (again). Producers are in effect paying a private tax on production," Jane Berwanger, lawyer for the farmers told the Associated Press reports.

In the latest installment of the legal battle erupting in South America, the Brazilian court has ruled in favor of the Brazilian farmers, saying Monsanto owes them at least US$2 billion paid since 2004. Monsanto, however, has appealed the decision and the case is ongoing.

In essence, Monsanto argues that once a farmer buys their seed, they have to pay the global bio-tech giant a yearly fee in perpetuity – with no way out.

At stake is Brazil’s highly profitable and ever growing soybean production. Last year, Brazil was the world's second producer and exporter of soybean behind the United States, according to the AFP report. The crops can be used for anything from animal feed to bio fuel, and worldwide demand is growing.

Genetically engineered soy first appeared illegally in Brazil in the 1990’s, smuggled in from neighboring Argentina. The Brazilian farmers found the seed attractive despite the ban in place from the Brazilian authorities because Monsanto had specifically designed the seed to be resistant to its own immensely powerful and popular herbicide Roundup.

When used in tandem, the strong herbicide will kill the weeds while allowing the soy crops to grow unimpeded. After the ban was lifted, genetically modified seed flooded the Brazilian market, and now 85 per cent of the Brazilian soy crop is genetically-engineered. Soy has been extremely successful in Brazil, currently making up 26 per cent of the country’s farm exports last year and netting Brazil a total of $24.1 billion, according to AP. However, Brazil’s farmers were apparently unaware there would be a heavy price to pay.

To make a deal with Monsanto is to make a deal with a company that is one the most powerful and pervasive food giants in the world. It is the world’s number one seed developer, and its patented genes have been inserted into 95 per cent of all American soy, and 80 per cent of all American corn crops. Monsanto has repeatedly levied large damage suits against independent farmers that have unknowingly or unwittingly used their seed.

And Monsanto’s reach goes far beyond agriculture.

Monsanto is also the world’s largest manufacturer of synthetic bovine growth hormone, injected into cows in order to stimulate greater milk production. The widespread pressure by the company to use the chemical and the subsequent measures taken by Monsanto to suppress information regarding the potential health risks sparked uproar among American farmers.

When dairy producers that did not use Monsanto’s products began labeling their products as “Hormone Free” or “Organic”, Monsanto slapped them with a lawsuit as recently as 2008, claiming the labels amounted to negative advertising against hormone-produced milk.

Director of corporate communications for Monsanto, Phil Angell, summed up Monsanto’s take on the issue in a report by food author Michael Pollan for New York Times Magazine in 1998: "Monsanto should not have to vouch for the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is FDA's job.”

Mass arrests: Over 700 Canadian protesters detained in police crackdown

Montreal police watch protesters on May 23, 2012 during a demonstration against student tuition hikes (AFP Photo / Andre Tremblay)

Source: Russia Today
http://www.rt.com/news/canada-police-arrest-students-tuition-110/

Over 700 students have been arrested in Canada during the latest night of rallies against tuition fee hikes and the adoption of controversial bill that is widely seen as a tool to limit freedom of speech, association and assembly.

Police in Montreal dispersed unsanctioned protests and arrested 518 demonstrators on Wednesday night. The arrests were also made in Quebec City, where some 170 were detained, and in Sherbrooke. There were no reports of injuries or casualties.

Police used kettling tactics to encircle the protesters and contain them within a small space. People reportedly threw projectiles such as fireworks and bottles at officers, forcing them to carry out extensive arrests.

Most of those detained have already been released. Some face $1,000 fines.

For over 14 weeks, Canada has been facing the most sustained student demonstration in its history. The protest on Wednesday started as a peaceful march of thousands, just like the majority of previous rallies.

In order to give the police another non-lethal means of pressure on protesters, Quebec’s legislative assembly adopted a bill that introduces enormous fines of $24,000 to $122,000 against unions and student organizations which do not stop their members from protesting. Individuals found guilty of organizing a protest now face a fine of some $34,000.

On Tuesday, the movement marked the 100th day of demonstrations against the tuition hikes of around $250 per year with a massive rally in Montreal. Over 120 people were detained following the event.

Quebec adopts emergency law to end student protests

Students march through the streets of Montreal protesting against tuition fee hikes on May 17, 2012.

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2012/05/19/241948/quebec-emergency-law-student-protests/

Quebec's provincial government has voted in favor of an emergency law aimed at ending the 14-week rallies and protests against tuition fee hikes.

Following a 21-hour debate overnight Thursday, the National Assembly members approved the legislation, voting 68-48.

The controversial emergency legislation outlined strict regulations governing protests and includes conditions for heavy fines for students and their federations.

Under the new legislation, any individual who prevents students from entering an educational institution or disrupt classes will be fined between CAD 1,000 and CAD 5,000.

The punishments will rise to between CAD 7,000 and CAD 35,000 for a student leader and to between CAD 25,000 and CAD 125,000 for student federations or unions.

The law also forces regulations to govern student protests, requiring protesters to inform police of their demonstration plans including eight hours notice for details such as the itinerary, the duration and the exact time of the action.

Critics, however, considered the law as an affront to individual’s rights to freedom of expression, association and conscience, and believed that the legislature of the French speaking province has showed ill-considered improvisation in dealing with student strike actions.

Lucie Lemonde, a law professor who teaches at University of Quebec in Montreal, even compared the law with the notorious War Measures Act imposed in Quebec during the 1970 FLQ crisis.

"It's the worst law that I've ever seen, except for the War Measures Act. We knew something was coming, but I didn't think they would use it to change the rules of the game in terms of the rights to demonstrate,” he said.

Thousands of people descended to the streets in Montreal and Quebec City late Friday night to voice their opposition to the controversial law.

Quebec students have been holding almost daily demonstrations over the past weeks in an attempt to voice their outrage at the proposed tuition fee rises.

Under the provisional agreement, university fees would increase CAD 1,780 over seven years, or about CAD 254 a year, bringing the total to CAD 4,000 per year. The plan is scheduled to be effective from 2012-13 until 2016-2017 academic years.

Congress still okay with indefinite detention and torture of Americans

Source: Russia Today
http://rt.com/usa/news/detention-amendment-ndaa-rep-599/

Even after a federal court deemed the NDAA unconstitutional, the US House of Representatives refused to exclude indefinite detention provisions from the infamous defense spending bill during a vote on Friday.

An attempt to strike down any provisions allowing for the US military to indefinitely detain American citizens without charge from next year’s National Defense Authorization Act was shot down Friday morning in the House of Representatives.

Following discussions on an amendment to the 2013 NDAA that was proposed by Rep. Adam Smith (D-Washington) and Rep. Justin Amash (R-Michigan), House lawmakers opted against passing the law by a vote of 182-238. Had the Smish-Amash amendment passed, military detention for terror suspects captured in the US would have been excluded in the annual defense spending bill. Provisions that allows for that power, Sections 1021 and 1022, were inserted into the NDAA for Fiscal Year 2012. President Barack Obama signed that legislation on New Year’s Eve, essentially authorizing the US Armed Forces to detain Americans indefinitely at military facilities over only allegation of ties with terrorists and subject them to enhanced interrogation tactics on par with torture.

On Thursday night, Rep. Amash took to his Facebook page to address the amendment with his followers. “No matter how much I am slandered or my positions are demagogued, I will NEVER stop fighting to defend your liberty and the Constitution,” wrote the congressman.

Back on Capitol Hill, Rep. Amash circulated a document to his fellow lawmakers on Thursday outlining his proposed amendment. In urging his colleagues to vote yes on the Smith-Amash amendment, the representative from Michigan explained to Congress that the proposal would offer protection to non-citizens of the United States and is the only amendment up for discussion that would guarantee Americans a charge and trial.

Elsewhere in the paper, Rep. Amash harped on a decision out of a federal court earlier this week that ruled that the NDAA violated the US Constitution.

“Our constituents demand that we protect their right to a charge and a trial — especially after the NDAA was ruled unconstitutional this week,” wrote Rep. Amash.

That decision came Wednesday when United States District Judge Katherine Forrest shunned the NDAA’s indefinite detention provision, saying it had a "chilling impact on First Amendment rights.”

"An individual could run the risk of substantially supporting or directly supporting an associated force without even being aware that he or she was doing so,” wrote Judge Forrest, who then cited complaints for American journalists who were concerned that they’d be imprisoned without charge solely for speaking with alleged terrorists.

Attorney Carl Mayer represented the plaintiffs in this case and spoke with RT after Judge Forrest’s decision. Mr. Mayer revealed that while the Obama administration can — and most likely will — file an appeal, “we are suggesting that it may not be in their best interest because there are so many people from all sides of the political spectrum opposed to this law.”

Weighing in with RT after the defeat of the Smith-Amash amendment on Friday, Mr. Mayer added, “I can’t imagine why the Congress is doing this other than they are scoring cheap political points—they think — with their constituents because they want to be seen as tough on terror, when, in fact, what they are doing is undermining 200 years of American civil liberties law.”

Although that opposition has indeed been widespread since even before this year’s NDAA was signed by President Obama on December 31, it was absent on Capitol Hill this Friday when the Smith-Amash amendment was shot down.

Moments before the amendment went up for vote, Rep. Amash wrote on Facebook, “We know the NDAA's detention provision is unconstitutional. The House will vote on one substantive solution.”

“Will we fix it? And if we don't, how will we explain that to our constituents?”

Canada discriminatorily applies human rights act

Source: Press TV
http://www.presstv.ir/detail/239556.html

Canadians have formed a citizen movement to put pressure on law enforcement agencies to apply the law consistently to all war criminals rather than selectively, Press TV reports.

One of the most vocal countries when it comes to war crimes and human rights issues, Canada has so far failed to arrest some international war criminals that frequently travel to the country.

In 2000, Canadian government enshrined the crimes against humanity and war crimes act to prevent Canada from becoming a safe haven for war criminals.

It has however failed to implement the law when it comes to international war criminals such as former US President George W Bush, his Vice President Dick Cheney and Benjamin Netanyahu who are well known for committing war crimes and crimes against humanity.

This is while in 2009 the law was applied to an African war criminal in 2009 for his role in the Rwanda civil war.

Canadian citizens are now demanding authorities to apply the law consistently rather than selectively when it comes to applying it to some politicians.

Although Calgary Police Chief Rick Hanson says that they are bound to the international treaties, others believe that the Canadian police department is acting against the known international norms by not arresting internationally known war criminals.

“The police chief is spitting on the rule of law, he is spitting on international treaties and he is also spitting on domestic law, Canadian Law, there is statute in Canada, the crimes against humanity and war crimes act, it was passed in 2000, its essence is to say Canada is not to be a haven for war criminals,” said Anthony J. Hall, Professor at the University of Lethbridge.

“International treaties oblige the police to arrest Mr. Bush. The convention against torture obliges Canada to arrest a foreign national suspected of involvement with torture, committed anywhere, against anyone when that person is found in Canada,” said Gail Davidson with the Lawyers against war.

The double standards practiced by Canadian authorities in applying the law fairly and consistently have sparked doubts about the ability of the country to avoid becoming a safe haven for selected international war criminals in future.

CISPA passes House in unexpected last-minute vote

AFP Photo / Paul J. Richards

Source: Russia Today
http://rt.com/news/house-cispa-vote-thursday-083/

The House of Representatives has approved Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act with a vote count of 248-168. The bill is now headed for the Senate. President Barack Obama will be able to sign or cancel it pending Senate approval.

Initially slated to vote on the bill Friday, the House of Representatives decided to pass Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) Thursday after approving a number of amendments.

Apart from cyber and national security purposes, the bill would now allow the government to use private information obtained through CISPA for the investigation and prosecution of “cybersecurity crime,” protection of individuals and the protection of children. The new clauses define “cybersecurity crime” as any crime involving network disruption or hacking.

“Basically this means CISPA can no longer be called a cyber security bill at all. The government would be able to search information it collects under CISPA for the purposes of investigating American citizens with complete immunity from all privacy protections as long as they can claim someone committed a 'cybersecurity crime.' Basically it says the Fourth Amendment does not apply online, at all,” Techdirt's Leigh Beadon said.

Declan McCullagh, correspondent from CNET News, says CISPA will cause more trouble than is immediately apparent.

“The most controversial section of CISPA is the language – that notwithstanding any other portion the of law, companies can share what they want as long as it’s for what they call a ‘cyber security purpose,'" he told RT.

The CISPA battleground in numbers

CISPA was introduced in the House last November. Critics chided the bill, saying its broad wording could allow the government to spy on individual Internet users and block websites that publish vaguely defined ‘sensitive’ data.

"[CISPA] doesn’t really have any protections against cyber threats, all it does is make people share their information. But that’s not going to solve the problem. What’s going to solve the problem is actual security measures, protecting the service in the first place, not spying on people after the fact," Internet activist Aaron Swartz told RT.

The White House issued a statement Wednesday saying President Barack Obama would be advised to veto the bill if he receives it. The Obama administration denounces the proposed law for potentially giving the government cyber-sleuthing powers that would allow both federal authorities and private businesses to sneak into inboxes and online activities in the name of combating Internet terrorism tactics.

We asked our Twitter followers what they think of CISPA's possible adoption into law – and they don't seem happy.


Earlier, the House of Representatives and Senate also considered adopting the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and Protect IP Act (PIPA). These bills sought to entitle the US government to curb access to “rogue websites” that illegally hosted intellectual property. The bills could effectively force search engines to remove these websites from search results, an action many private companies considered intrusive.

PIPA and SOPA were opposed by many Internet giants including Google, Mozilla, Facebook, Yahoo!, Wikipedia and Reddit. Google organized a petition against the legislation, while Wikipedia held a 24-hour blackout to protest the bill in January. As a result, SOPA was recalled while PIPA was postponed indefinitely.

However, CISPA was actually backed by Facebook, despite its opposition to SOPA and PIPA. In a blog post on April 13, Joel Kaplan, Vice President of US Public Policy at Facebook, argued that if enacted into law, the bill would “give companies like ours the tools we need to protect our systems and the security of our users’ information, while also providing those users confidence that adequate privacy safeguards are in place.”

A number of big companies, including AT&T, Microsoft, Boeing, Verizon and Oracle have also supported CISPA

CISPA: Patriot Act for the web’ – Internet activist

AFP Photo / David Gannon

Source: Russia Today
http://rt.com/usa/news/cispa-patriot-web-swartz-081/

With the House of Representatives' approval of the controversial CISPA bill, Internet users are worried about possible consequences. RT spoke to Internet activist Aaron Swartz, who said CISPA could be used to spy on people.

RT: Can you explain the difference between this legislation and the previous controversial bills aimed at combating piracy?

Aaron Swartz: The previous bills were about giving the government the power to censor the Internet. And this is more like a Patriot Act for the Internet. It sort of lets the government run roughshod over privacy protections and share personal data about you, take it from Facebook and Internet providers and use it without the normal privacy protections that are in the law.

RT: So as far as individuals are concerned, is it worse than the previous ones?

AS: Yes, it’s worse because it does allow the government to shut down websites for ‘national security' reasons. It does have all the censorship problems the previous bill did. But it also goes much further and allows them to spy on people using the Internet, to get their personal data and e-mails. It’s an incredibly broad and dangerous bill.

RT: It’s not popular amongst Internet users, but it is popular with big companies like Facebook, IBM, and Microsoft – they’re backing CISPA. How can protesters compete with major corporations and companies like that?

AS: Well, it’s true. Big corporations are supporting the bill, especially big corporations that make money off of violating people's privacy. So it’s not a big surprise they’re in favor. But we’re seeing that the same way grassroots efforts were able to stop SOPA – despite millions of dollars of Hollywood lobbyists behind it – are now also being able to stop this bill. I mean everyone said, this is just a consensus in Washington, you couldn’t do anything. And now, even the White House is coming out against this bill with strong language, much stronger than they used against SOPA.

RT: The Obama administration is planning to veto the bill despite the fact that over two hundred in Congress are supporting it. Is this more about political point-scoring or preserving online privacy?

AS: I think the White House is obviously interested in repairing its reputation. But I think there are some people in the White House who really do care about privacy. The fact is, when they looked at this bill and investigated it, they saw how incredibly bad it was and that forced them to speak out.

RT: This bill, though, at the end of the day is meant to enforce cyber security and prevent threats. If these are real threats, then surely the US does need something to safeguard against them. What’s your alternative?

AS: Well the thing about this bill is it doesn’t really have any protections against cyber threats, all it does is make people share their information. But that’s not going to solve the problem. What’s going to solve the problem is actual security measures, protecting the service in the first place, not spying on people after the fact. So what I’d like to see is what a bunch of security experts have proposed – a bill that really does secure computer systems, makes them harder to attack, rather than one that involves more spying and watching people.

RT: Across Europe, we’ve seen thousands come out to protest the planned global Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, or ACTA. But depending on Friday’s vote in Congress, do you expect the same kind of response in the US over CISPA?

AS: We’ve already seen quite an outcry. I don’t think it’s going to be on the level we’ve seen in other countries. Almost a million people have signed a petition on the Internet. Many representatives have spoken out against it. This is a tougher fight, no question, because it’s harder to go up against this notion of cyber terrorism that they’re using. But I think we’re making a lot of progress and I think we’ll see the bill eventually defeated.

CISPA was introduced in the House of Representatives last November by Mike Rogers (R-MI) and has since been amended on a number of occasions. Numerous critics, including World Wide Web founder Tim Bernars-Lee and Representative Ron Paul, continue to criticize its overly broad wording, which would permit private companies to submit personal user data to the government.

Congress had previously failed to approve SOPA and PIPA, which sought to bar access to websites containing illegally published copyrighted information. The bills were shelved in January, after a day of protests by major Internet companies, during which Wikipedia and Reddit among others remained inaccessible for 24 hours.

An international equivalent of SOPA and PIPA, ACTA was signed by eight countries plus the EU and all of its members. However, the agreement was met with a bevy of protests throughout Europe and has so far not been ratified by any country

Pentagon wants spies sneaking through offices around the globe

Pentagon building in Washington, DC (AFP Photo)

Source: Russia Today
http://rt.com/usa/news/pentagon-spies-us-military-599/

The Pentagon is pushing for more power when it comes to international spying. The US military is now making a case to open up an undercover operation aimed at the overseas civilian sector.

The US Department of Defense has asked Congress to approve a change in intelligence outlines which would permit America’s undercover units to send spies into the offices of foreign military contractors. It would involve infiltrating factories and businesses building warheads for competing nations, essentially establishing the businessman as America’s next mold for a spy rather than the more-recognized James Bond-type. Critics say that doing so might be big for America’s intel gathering operations, but it could also signal the start of a slippery slope with potentially catastrophic consequences.

The Inside Defense website first reported the story on Friday, publishing an article acknowledging that the Pentagon pushed a package of legislative proposals to the US Congress a week earlier. Those requests largely expand the Defense Department’s existing authority in spy operations, the website reports, including such calls to let the DoD increase its authority with intelligence gathering so the Pentagon can “conduct revenue-generating commercial activities to protect such operations and would provide an important safeguard for US military forces conducting hazardous operations abroad.”

“The conflict with al-Qaeda and its affiliates, and other developments, have required the regular conduct of small-scale clandestine military operations to prepare the battlefield for military operations against terrorists and their sponsors,” insists the DoD as they introduce that proposal.

The Defense Department wants to get extra spies infiltrating overseas, but the missions they would be engaged in would be different from just standard covert quests. Instead the DoD wants to be able to use clandestine operations, which means that the Department would not only be allowed to keep the country’s sponsorship of the program a secret, but they could be permitted to ignore the existence of the mission entirely.

Putting spies into business operations that shake hands with foreign militaries might be a good idea in terms of infiltrating domestic drone shops and other classified campaigns, but it could be more dangerous than the DoD might realize, some fear. In a write-up by Wired, the website acknowledges that sending spies into the civilian sector would not just open up a new foreign front for US operations, but would expose innocent workers to the dangerous world of international warfare.

“Once civilian commercial activities become a front for US military spying, then foreign governments will likely view normal businessmen as targets for their own counterspying, or even detention,” speculates Spencer Ackerman, a correspondent with Wired’s Danger Room.

It could also, of course, give foreign operatives a reason to do the same back in the US.

Even worse than SOPA: New CISPA cybersecurity bill will censor the Web

Source: Russia Today
http://rt.com/usa/news/cispa-bill-sopa-internet-175/

An onrush of condemnation and criticism kept the SOPA and PIPA acts from passing earlier this year, but US lawmakers have already authored another authoritarian bill that could give them free reign to creep the Web in the name of cybersecurity.

As congressmen in Washington consider how to handle the ongoing issue of cyberattacks, some legislators have lent their support to a new act that, if passed, would let the government pry into the personal correspondence of anyone of their choosing.

H.R. 3523, a piece of legislation dubbed the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (or CISPA for short), has been created under the guise of being a necessary implement in America’s war against cyberattacks. But the vague verbiage contained within the pages of the paper could allow Congress to circumvent existing exemptions to online privacy laws and essentially monitor, censor and stop any online communication that it considers disruptive to the government or private parties. Critics have already come after CISPA for the capabilities that it will give to seemingly any federal entity that claims it is threatened by online interactions, but unlike the Stop Online Privacy Act and the Protect IP Acts that were discarded on the Capitol Building floor after incredibly successful online campaigns to crush them, widespread recognition of what the latest would-be law will do has yet to surface to the same degree.

Kendall Burman of the Center for Democracy and Technology tells RT that Congress is currently considering a number of cybersecurity bills that could eventually be voted into law, but for the group that largely advocates an open Internet, she warns that provisions within CISPA are reason to worry over what the realities could be if it ends up on the desk of President Barack Obama. So far CISPA has been introduced, referred and reported by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and expects to go before a vote in the first half of Congress within the coming weeks.

“We have a number of concerns with something like this bill that creates sort of a vast hole in the privacy law to allow government to receive these kinds of information,” explains Burman, who acknowledges that the bill, as written, allows the US government to involve itself into any online correspondence, current exemptions notwithstanding, if it believes there is reason to suspect cyber crime. As with other authoritarian attempts at censorship that have come through Congress in recent times, of course, the wording within the CISPA allows for the government to interpret the law in such a number of degrees that any online communication or interaction could be suspect and thus unknowingly monitored.

In a press release penned last month by the CDT, the group warned then that CISPA allows Internet Service Providers to “funnel private communications and related information back to the government without adequate privacy protections and controls.

The bill does not specify which agencies ISPs could disclose customer data to, but the structure and incentives in the bill raise a very real possibility that the National Security Agency or the DOD’s Cybercommand would be the primary recipient,” reads the warning.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation, another online advocacy group, has also sharply condemned CISPA for what it means for the future of the Internet. “It effectively creates a ‘cybersecurity'’ exemption to all existing laws,” explains the EFF, who add in a statement of their own that “There are almost no restrictions on what can be collected and how it can be used, provided a company can claim it was motivated by ‘cybersecurity purposes.’”

What does that mean? Both the EFF and CDT say an awfully lot. Some of the biggest corporations in the country, including service providers such as Google, Facebook, Twitter or AT&T, could copy confidential information and send them off to the Pentagon if pressured, as long as the government believes they have reason to suspect wrongdoing. In a summation of their own, the Congressional Research Service, a nonpartisan arm of the Library of Congress, explains that “efforts to degrade, disrupt or destroy” either “a system or network of a government or private entity” is reason enough for Washington to reach in and read any online communiqué of their choice.

The authors of CISPA say the bill has been made “To provide for the sharing of certain cyber threat intelligence and cyber threat information between the intelligence community and cybersecurity entities,” but not before noting that the legislation could be used “and for other purposes,” as well — which, of course, are not defined.

“Cyber security, when done right and done narrowly, could benefit everyone,” Burman tells RT. “But it needs to be done in an incremental way with an arrow approach, and the heavy hand that lawmakers are taking with these current bills . . . it brings real serious concerns.”

So far CISPA has garnered support from over 100 representatives in the House who are favoring this cybersecurity legislation without taking into considerations what it could do to the everyday user of the Internet. And while the backlash created by opponents of SOPA and PIPA has not materialized to the same degree yet, Burman warns Congress that it could be only a matter of time before concerned Americans step up to have their say.

“One of the lessons we learned in the reaction to SOPA and PIPA is that when Congress tries to legislate on things that are going to affect Internet users’ experience, the Internet users are going to pay attention,” says Burman. H.R. 3523, she cautions, “Definitely could affect in a very serious way the internet experience.” Luckily, adds Burman, “People are starting to notice.” Given the speed that the latest censorship bill could sneak through Congress, however, anyone concerned over the future of the Internet should be on the lookout for CISPA as it continues to be considered on Capitol Hill.