04/24/13 – Mark M. Jaycox – The Scott Horton Show

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All right, so our next guest on the show today is Mark M. Jaycox from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
And I'm sorry, sir, I don't have your title right in front of me here.
Welcome to the show.
No problem.
I'm a policy analyst for EFF.
Policy analyst.
Very good.
Okay.
Sorry about that.
No problem.
Glad to be here.
Electronic Frontier Foundation, that's EFF.org.
And thank the gods for you guys.
I don't know where we'd be without you here.
Thanks.
So first of all, I am horribly ignorant about this topic.
I'm sorry I did not do my homework before the show today.
But that probably puts me on pretty equal footing with most of the general public, too.
What in the world is a CISPA and why should I care, sir?
Sure.
CISPA is the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act.
And it's a bill that was introduced in the House that's supposed to encourage companies to share more information about online threats and online hacks with the government.
And you should be concerned because it allows, in order to encourage companies to share this information with the government, it allows them to bypass all privacy laws and grant them new powers to spy on their users and collect information on them and then pass it all into a black hole in the government.
So in other words, it's the FBI and whatever other government agencies, they can't just scoop up all your stuff without a warrant completely anyway.
So this is a loophole where they just deputize your ISP to do all the snooping for them.
Yeah.
Right now there are privacy laws that have judicial processes like warrants and other information.
There are also just privacy laws that stop certain information from being shared.
And what this allows is exactly, it allows them to bypass these laws in the name of, quote, unquote, cybersecurity is what the bill labels it as.
It doesn't even call it online security or kind of network security.
And bypass these laws and then send all that information to the government, including any agency within the government.
So, you know, a main kind of problem we've had with this bill is that the companies, theoretically in the bill and what we think will happen with this bill is that the companies will be collecting all this information and this information won't be sent to a civilian agency or won't be sent to an agency that's supposed to just deal with kind of our domestic protection and protecting our critical infrastructure, but it'll be sent to kind of the NSA and these intelligence agencies that will just hoard all this data on Americans.
And, you know, their mission statements and what they're supposed to be doing isn't supposed to be focusing on domestic Americans.
They're supposed to be on the foreign side.
And that's, you know, exactly what will happen under the bill.
And now, didn't the American people rise up and defeat this thing through their elected representatives last year?
Well, that was exactly what happened.
We saw a tremendous amount of grassroots activism.
And this year we saw a similar thing, a tremendous amount of grassroots activism around it and people really understanding complex issues.
And they rose up.
And what did happen last year is that a similar thing happened last year.
It did pass out of the House, but the Senate heard the grassroots and heard kind of the, you know, Internet voice and took up a bill and drafted a bill that had better privacy protection.
Now, they weren't the best privacy protection, but they did realize that CISPA had serious faults.
And just like the White House does, the White House has threatened to veto CISPA if the Senate were to ever pass it.
And the Senate, so the Senate recognized, you know, the core privacy problems in the bill and did try to offer solutions.
They had narrower definitions.
They limited the amount of sharing and things like that.
Well, I hadn't realized that the president had threatened to veto it, but he doesn't always follow through on those threats.
I wouldn't put too much into that.
Yeah, he doesn't.
But it was certainly a win for privacy that his letter, his veto threat focused on the privacy aspects of the bill and the civil liberties aspects of the bill.
And that was certainly encouraging, especially because it sets the tone for the Senate.
And just like last year, the Senate is again setting the tone for CISPA.
So it remains, it's puzzling that, you know, CISPA is thrown up every year or in the past couple of years only to be stopped by the Senate.
And, you know, it looks like the drafters haven't really learned that at least the Senate, when it takes up a online security bill or a cybersecurity bill, that they do want to ensure some semblance of privacy protections within it.
Yeah.
Well, and, you know, if the Senate and the president aren't committed to pushing this thing through, then that doesn't necessarily mean that they won't.
But it sounds like it does necessarily mean that the American people have an opportunity here to rise back up and make sure that, you know, you may be on the fence about this, Senator, whoever, but don't you lean that way.
Yep.
And that's certainly what we're advocating for.
I mean, we will be continuing a strong push in the Senate because there is just everyday notion and a strong belief that we don't need to give up privacy for security.
This is not a choice that lands on one side or the other.
There are ways to protect both while also passing a online security bill.
And now, was this the one last year?
There were two different ones that were both something along the same lines here.
But was this the one where Google blacked out for a day and all of that?
Because I think that's what really did it.
It wasn't grassroots voter complaints.
It was powerful Internet companies, you know, objecting, right?
That was SOPA.
That was SOPA, which was last January, and that focused on copyright issues and IP issues.
And CISPA focuses on the online security and network issues.
And you did see some companies – excuse me, there wasn't a blackout per se, but companies like Mozilla and Gandhi.net and Namecheap, like domain name companies, did have a week of action with a lot of the privacy advocates and did have banners up and things like that.
But SOPA certainly touched on – the copyright issues seemed to have electrified the companies because SOPA doesn't – unlike CISPA, CISPA has immunity to companies, right?
So that's why they're allowed to bypass a lot of these privacy laws.
And that's the reason why a lot of companies favor CISPA and aren't as outspoken against it.
Whereas with SOPA, it was a very straight kind of aggressive copyright and IP bill that really clamped down on free speech online.
All right.
So now to get back to where the rubber meets the road on this CISPA thing, assuming that it passed the Senate and the conference committee didn't change it in any meaningful way and the president signed it and it was now the cop's job, what exactly would this mean as far as the local ISP or say Google or other search engines or whatever?
What information that they would then be mandated to provide to the government or that they could be mandated to provide to the government?
Yeah, so the practical kind of answer is that the company – if it did pass, the company could identify – as long as the company said that they suspect a threat or they think that someone is a threat, they could then begin collecting massive amounts of information on them on their own network and then try and make any decision that, quote, tries to identify and obtain information about the threat, end quote.
So what they would do is kind of – they would think Scott is a threat and they would just try and soak up as much information about you as possible that they have or that they could find and get and then send that all to the government and to other companies within this – what they label a cybersecurity information exchange.
And so that's kind of the practical actions that would occur and they're allowed to do that mainly because they no longer have to abide by any of the privacy policies.
They no longer have to abide by the privacy laws and things like that.
All right, so right, sort of like the telecom immunity, the FISA amendments thing where it's not necessarily legalized, but don't worry, you cannot be held accountable for breaking the law.
Yeah, I mean it's very similar.
In the FISA amendments one, the attorney general can just hand out certifications, immunity certifications, because it's written into the bill where it's just notwithstanding any law, any privacy law.
And so that's really the only difference, but they're certainly similar situations.
Yeah.
All right, now, so what can people do about this really because just the head of a household calling and saying, me and my entire family are against this isn't going to push a senator very hard.
What's a man to do?
Well, actually – Or a woman.
I think that actually does have an impact on the Senate officers and that's part of the reason why we do so and why we focus on so many grassroots actions and movements.
Because even though – I know a lot of people do feel – don't feel as empowered when they call a senator or when they send an email.
But there is a staffer dedicated to counting those numbers, and those numbers do climb the ladder within the Senate office.
And so what I would encourage people to do is keep on spreading the word.
I mean I think that the more you talk with your fellow citizens about these online bills that are going to kind of eviscerate privacy law is certainly the first step.
I mean just getting people to recognize – and we saw that with CISPA – just getting that initial outburst of people recognizing the acronym CISPA and what it is and what it does and its implications is a great first step.
And then after that, as it moves in the Senate or when it's introduced in the Senate, certainly contacting your senator and making noise about it on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media.
Now, you know, one thing that we are up against is the repetition here where, you know, if people want to organize against it and stop at once, don't worry.
We'll just wait another couple of months and reintroduce it.
And I guess they could be expected to reintroduce it ten times.
So we unorganize masses of people who are concerned about our liberty out here.
We've got to be able to get off of our butts and organize temporarily in that fashion as we need to and work together to stop this thing each and every time until somehow they're made to give up.
Right?
Yeah.
I mean I completely agree.
And I think that's why – I mean that's why we have such a robust nonprofit kind of sector in this country.
I think that groups like Heritage, EFF, ACLU do serve as kind of these early warning systems.
And all we can do is flag the system, kind of write analyses and blog posts on the subject and try and spread the word amongst the community and everyone and get everyone to pay attention.
And once that catches wildfire, then you do see a large wave of action among people and voters.
Did you say that Heritage was good on something?
On something.
On something.
Oh, I hadn't heard.
Anyway.
Hey, thanks very much for your time.
I really appreciate it.
And I appreciate EFF.
You guys are great.
No problem.
Thanks again for having me.
And thanks for the kind words.
Yeah.
All right, everybody.
That is Mark M. Jaycox from the Electronic Frontier Foundation.at Government School, why you and your kids are so stupid.
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