House Passes CISPA, Tell Senate to Save Your Privacy!

Posted on April 26, 2012 by jokeefe

Today, the House of Representatives passed the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) by a vote of 248 to 168. Unfortunately, which of the Massachusetts delegation voted for CISPA is unknown, though Congressmen Markey and Olver have come out against it.  UPDATE: The entire Massachusetts US House delegation voted against CISPA according to this final vote tally.

TechDirt reports that the final bill is even worse than the one proposed. In addition to allowing the government to use information for cybersecurity or national security purposes, it also allows the government to get data for the investigation and prosecution of cybersecurity crime, protection of individuals, and protection of children. CISPA isn’t a cybersecurity bill at all. It is a spy on Americans bill.

This bill would obliterate our 4th Amendment rights on-line. Under CISPA, the government can ask your ISP to `voluntarily’ hand over everything you send over their network: your emails, downloads, web searches, account passwords. No warrant would be required, no judge would have to review their request to ensure that they have a reasonable reason for their request. Once the data is in the hands of one agency, it can end up being sent to any government agency or even a private company. Any company that hands over your data will not be held liable for its misuse. If you doubt that ISPs will willingly hand over your private Internet traffic, then please review the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program.

If this bill is passed in the Senate and not vetoed by President Obama, potentially anything you do on-line can be accessed by the government. While President Obama has said he will veto CISPA, he also said that about NDAA, and he signed that bill.

We have to kill this bill in the Senate! Please call or email both Massachusetts Senators and tell them to oppose CISPA and any other bills like it. The privacy you save may be your own.

Scott Brown
(202) 224-4543
http://scottbrown.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/emailscottbrown

John Kerry
(202) 224-2742
http://kerry.senate.gov/contact/

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May 12th Free Film Fest Schedule

Posted on April 26, 2012 by jokeefe

While we are a bit preoccupied with stopping the CISPA spy bill (more on that in the next blog post), we finalized the schedule for our May 12th Free Open Film Fest. Please spread the word about it. We will have posters you can put up and a page with links to the films soon.

Start Time Focus Videos Scheduled
3:00pm Kids Hour Sneeze Me Away
Steamboat Willie
& other cartoons
4:00pm Copyright Hour The $8 billion iPod
Steal This Film
How I beat a patent troll
5:00pm Patents Hour Open Source Cancer Research,
Patent Absurdity,
Innovation in Fashion Industry
6:00pm Open Govt. Hour Rick Falkvinge: I am a Pirate
Government Crowdsourcing
6:30pm Break Time
7:00pm Open Torrented Films Pioneer One
Otherworlds Short Films
8:00pm Public Domain Films George Romero’s Night of the Living Dead
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Posted in Copyright, Fun and Games, Out And About, Patents | Leave a comment

Mass. Pirate Party opposes CISPA, urges supporters to tell Congress

Posted on April 18, 2012 by masspirates

The Massachusetts Pirate Party opposes the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) – H.R.3523 as a violation of our fundamental rights to privacy and freedom of speech.

CISPA is would allow federal and state governments to request detailed records of what we send over the Internet from telecommunications companies. Since the bill is intended for:

“the protection of a system or network from … theft or misappropriation of private or government information, intellectual property”

we believe that CISPA would make it possible for telecommunications companies to actively monitor private communications over their networks in order to detect and censor transfers of copyrighted content. Telecommunications companies would not be required to anonymize the information they gather and so the personal details of users would be handed over to governments to use as they wish.

Additionally, state and federal governments would be allowed to share such personal information with private companies. Because such data would be used to protect against ”cybersecurity” threats, should those governments or companies misuse this information, they and their employees would be protected from being sued.

CISPA would preempt state law and prevent states from imposing privacy protections on the data gathered or limiting what data can be gathered.

While this system is voluntary, since the introduction of the PATRIOT Act we have seen the increasing collusion between telecommunications companies and the federal government to spy on people. Giving such broad powers to the government and the corporations helping them will undermine our rights to privacy and freedom of speech.

CISPA is so broad it would give the government and corporations access to what we read, watch or say on the Internet, and would destroy what little remaining privacy we have on the Internet.

We urge our members and supporters to contact their Congressperson and Senators and urge them to oppose CISPA and other bills like it.  The EFF has setup a page that helps people contact their Congressperson and Senators via Twitter and email.  However, calling them (phone numbers below) is the most effective method.

1.  Contact your Senators

Scott Brown
(202) 224-4543
http://scottbrown.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/emailscottbrown

John Kerry
(202) 224-2742
http://kerry.senate.gov/contact/

2.  Contact your Congressperson

To find out who represents you in Congress, please visit Where Do I Vote MA and enter your address.

  • 1st Congressional District - John Olver – (202) 225-5335 / (413) 532-7010
  • 2nd Congressional District – Richard Neal – (202) 225-5601 / (413) 785-0325
  • 3rd Congressional District – James McGovern – (202) 225-6101 / (508) 831-7356
  • 4th Congressional District – Barney Frank – (202) 225-5931
  • 5th Congressional District – Niki Tsongas – (202) 225-3411 / (978) 459-0101
  • 6th Congressional District – Jonathan Tierney – (202) 225-8020 / (781) 595-7375
  • 7th Congressional District – Ed Markey – (202) 225-2836 / (508) 875-2900
  • 8th Congressional District – Michael Capuano – (202) 225-5111 / (617) 621-6208
  • 9th Congressional District – Stephen Lynch – (202) 225-8273 / (617) 428-2000
  • 10th Congressional District – William Keating – (202) 225-3111 / (617) 770-3700
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Posted in Censorship, Freedom of Speech, Privacy | 1 Comment

We are The Party of Open

Posted on April 9, 2012 by masspirates

As we mentioned a few blog posts back, we started a discussion recently about how can we briefly describe what we are for. David Hardwick once suggested that we should be the party of open, and there is a certain ring to that.

So after talking about it, we decided to adopt the wording that Eric Zoltan was using on our Youtube site:

We are the Party of Open! We stand for open government, open culture and open innovation. We are the anti-monopoly and the pro-human party. Pro-Human means a high regard for your individual privacy and your right to free expression. It also means an end to the concept of “Corporate Personhood”.

If you want something even more brief then you could try:

The Party of Open: Open Government, Open Culture, Open Innovation & People First

We fully expect this summary will evolve over time.

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Posted in About, Issues | 2 Comments

Copyright Battle Tactics Talk Posted

Posted on April 8, 2012 by masspirates

Michael Anderson’s conference talk, Copyright Battle Tactics, is now up at our Youtube page. You can find the other talks we posted at our 2012 conference page.

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Join us at Together Boston this week

Posted on April 3, 2012 by masspirates

Captain James O’Keefe will be speaking tomorrow at Together Boston‘s Patently Stupid panel.  Together Boston is a Electronic Music Festival in Cambridge and Boston that runs until Sunday, April 8th.

The panel will be this Wednesday, April 4th at noon at the Together Center at 579a Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139.

Also, on Saturday, April 7th, from 11am to 5pm, we will have a table at Together Boston‘s expo, The Get Together. We could use your help with tabling and the like. Please contact us at info@masspirates.org if you can volunteer.

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Posted Stranger Danger Talk Video

Posted on March 29, 2012 by masspirates

We continue to release videos of our conference talks. Conor Sherman’s Stranger Danger talk is the latest at our Youtube page. We also posted the HighDef version of the Campaign to Win talk as a torrent.

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Posted in Organizing, Out And About, Privacy | 1 Comment

Some Conference Videos Available

Posted on March 23, 2012 by masspirates

Processing the videos of the conference is taking a bit of time, unfortunately, but Erik has been toiling away. Thankfully, his efforts have been successful and two of the talks are currently available:

Kopimism by Lauren Pespisa

Campaign to Win by James O’Keefe

We will post the rest of the videos as soon as they are available.

Just as a reminder, a number of speakers gave permission for us to post the slides of their talks (pdf):

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Posted in Copyright, Elections, Organizing, Out And About | 1 Comment

The Party of Open?

Posted on March 23, 2012 by jokeefe

We recently started a discussion about how we can better communicate our positions and goals. David Hardwick suggested that we be the party of open, namely:

  • Open Government – increased government transparency and accountability
  • Open Culture – limited copyrights & more sharing
  • Open Innovation – no patents

Unfortunately, issues such as increased personal privacy and reining in the power of corporations do not lend themselves well to being lumped under Open.  Open privacy seems to be an oxymoron.  Open Corporations as an idea, while useful from a consumer, worker and even investor perspective, is not what we are trying to communicate.

Erik Zoltan noted that “open” is one of the critical ideas but not the only one. He suggested that we are also the party of the human being, which explains our ideas on personal privacy and reining in corporations.  As ideas, being anti-monopoly and pro-person are two other angles that complement “open”.

After our discussion, we decided to open things up and gather other perspectives.  Whether we can summarize our positions down to one overarching idea or whether we need several is very much an open question.  We welcome your thoughts and comments.  Thanks!

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Posted in Issues | 4 Comments

Conference Slides Decks Posted

Posted on March 19, 2012 by jokeefe

Thanks to everyone who attended our conference, especially the speakers and volunteers.

A number of speakers gave permission for us to post the slides of their talks (pdf):

We will post videos of the conference talks as soon as they are available.

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Posted in Copyright, Freedom of Speech, Out And About, Patents, Privacy | Leave a comment