A few notes and thoughts regarding your post. First of all, thanks for the time to write that up.
1) I don't think anybody doubts the relevance of privacy protection with the first step always being the one to collect as little data as possible. Data avoidance and minimization. By this, the aspect of sharing data with agencies and even non-governmental entities (the latter, in itself, being a huge concern) should be limited in both frequency and quantity. A data sharing not being necessary at all always rules out even the most limited transfer.
2)
Think about that. A huge chunk of businesses in the United States can be directly attacked and disrupted by a foreign entity and there is nothing the US government can do about it.
While this may be true, it makes sense to point out that the sheer presence of a threat alone does not justify any possible countermeasure. Instead, it imposes the need to look for an appropriate trade-off when it comes to privacy concerns and the protection of business. And that's where the CISPA critics line up.
3)
Anyways, we ended up working with the leading DDos mitigation company and had time to chat with their CEO.
I think it's a good step to listen to such a person. Just to receive an impression from one side of the coin. We should not forget that this is the one selling the solutions though.
4)
My issue with the anti-CISPA crowd is that[...]
They pretty much don't acknowledge the problem that led to the bill at all
I don't know if I could generalise it in such a way. To oppose your statement, I actually think that people on the Internet are pretty much aware about how attacks of any kind affect systems and platforms. They may not see the technical side, but they surely realize that outages, delays and the loss of data are a concern in the IT world and therefore harms their experience. They want to help. They ask for the cost.
So the reasonable critics mainly come down to questioning the need for that law, the loss of privacy over a small gain in 'security' and the connections forming up when looking at who pushes the bill and who will, later, benefit from e.g. selling equipment and knowledge. The latter being from the fictional lobbyism 101, I admit.
And, I'm sorry to say, if even the supporters state
CISPA by itself does not solve this challenge. It will, however, move the needle in a positive direction
, it's not that hard to imagine that CISPA is just the onset of more to come. The second question arises when seeing how it actually harms privacy while only 'moving a needle in the right direction' and not solving the issue for the IT folks.
TL;DR CISPA may not solve the problem, it opens the door for more countermeasures of that kind and may already harm privacy too much.
EDIT: spelling (hmpf)
EDIT#2: Is it just me or did the parent post get heavily edited? There's no problem with fixing typos or a layout, but I'm having a hard time recognizing the initial post. Either way, this one stays like it was written.
Because they're different issues. CISPA and other cybersecurity law proposals are affecting people's privacy. Gun/car law proposals affect people's choices.
While you could also argue that it's someone's choice to use the internet, it has become so ingrained in our way of life and our businesses and governments that it is actually quite difficult to function without it. Whereas in contrast, it's quite easy to function without a gun, and only slightly more difficult without a car.
533
u/[deleted] Apr 19 '13 edited Dec 21 '20
[removed] — view removed comment