Long time no blogpost! Yikes!

But if there were ever a need to make sure I remember to post, this would be a reason. CISPA.

What is CISPA?

Check out the YouTube video below for a quick run down on the scope of what it can do.

So who would want something like this passed?

Specific Organizations Supporting H.R.3523

• COMPTEL
• Verizon
• Tech America
• USTelecom
• CTIA – The Wireless Association
• Sprint Nextel Corporation
• T-Mobile USA
• U.S. Cellular
• Leap Wireless International, Inc./Cricket Communications, Inc.
• Cellcom
• Bluegrass Cellular, Inc.
• Boeing
• Business Software Alliance
• Business Roundtable
• US Chamber of Commerce
• CSC
• Edison Electrical Institute
• Financial Services Roundtable
• Exelon
• Cyber, Space & Intelligence Association
• EMC Corporation
• Facebook
• Independent Telephone & Telecommunications Alliance
• Information Technology Industry Council
• Intel
• Internet Security Alliance
• Lockheed Martin
• National Cable & Telecommuications Association
• National Defense Industrial Association
• Symantec
• Oracle
• AT&T
• IBM
• Microsoft

Be very out spoken and write to your senators expressing how we cannot let this bill pass. You can EASILY and QUICKLY write a short letter to your representative expressing this in hopes that they listen by going to OpenCongress.org and clicking on the “OPPOSE” button on the right hand side in blue. It will then guide you through the process of sending a letter to your representative. If you are unsure of what to write, something along the lines of what I sent should suffice:

I am writing you because I am concerned about the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act currently making it’s way though our Congress. I oppose H.R. 3523 and urge you do the same.

The full title of the bill is “To provide for the sharing of certain cyber threat intelligence and cyber threat information between the intelligence community and cybersecurity entities, and for other purposes.”

It’s the “and for other purposes” part that I have the most problem with, sir. Now, I know national security is of the utmost importance to most Americans, but I feel that such security absolutely can NOT come at a cost of personal freedoms. I am not willing to trade any part of my freedom for such a false sense of security.

I am afraid that this bill, in it’s current form, contains too few limits on how and when the government may monitor private information. I also feel that here should be should be stronger safeguards included as to how the data may be used. This legislation and the vast powers it will grant could easily be used to persecute and spy on innocent US citizens and infringe on all of our civil liberties.

Yes, I believe that cybercrime is an important issue in today’s technical society, but unfortunately, this law is not the answer. It was written by those who have no true knowledge of the digital world they are trying to regulate and are painting with too large a brush. Rep. Rogers has said “..because we’ve listened to people’s concerns and incorporated them..”, but he’s not listening to the PEOPLE, he’s listening to companies that may look to take advantage of the bill’s vague language to serve their own purposes.

I fear that this bill will be seen by members of Congress as a step towards protecting us all from so-called “cyber attacks”, but it will end up becoming a tool to pursue anyone seen as a bludgeon and free pass to pursue “pirates”, and protect “intellectual properties” without the need for due process.

I thank you for your time and hope that you will consider the far-reaching implications of this bill before supporting it. To date there are already many petitions representing millions of concerned people expressing opposition to this bill. Please listen to us.

Thank you for your time and hard work.

Thats it! Click send and OpenCongress.com will create an account for you if you do not have one already. Once you verify your email, your letters will be sent and the whole process should have only taken a few minutes.

In a follow up to my previous post that let my blog readers pick my license plate frame wording, I decided to update now that “Do A Barrel Roll” probably isn’t the thing you want to be reading behind a Toyota Prius due to the recent problems people have been having with the 2010 models.

In case you were living under a rock my previous “Do A Barrel Roll” derives from “Star Fox 64″ a Nintendo 64 game that came out in 1997. It was an instant classic, but over the years the characters “voices” were chuckled at because of how they sounded whenever they talked. When a character did talk, a message of their words would appear on screen displaying what it was. Needless to say, one of these phrases would make it into Internet meme history. Peppy, one of Fox McCloud’s wingmen mentions to “Do A Barrel Roll!” when teaching the player how to fly the arwing craft used in the game to deflect enemy fire. But anyway, I decided to phase that out as I was getting quite bored with it.

I figured I might as well give a tip of the hat to one of the greatest Internet memes of all time. I won’t give it away but those who are wise will know automatically just from looking at the picture below what meme I decided to go with this time.

(photoshopped the license number out)

Direct link: http://bit.ly/RR