[bediger4000]

NSA/FBI surveillance is pretty unpopular - I'm pretty sure that Senator and Representative offices got a ton of calls about it, otherwise the PATRIOT Act section 215 wouldn't have sunsetted, it would have gotten a big sloppy wet rubber stamp. SOPA touched off a big campaign a couple of years ago, CISA gets nearly unanimous bad reviews.

So, why does the Senate keep trying to crank up this sort of thing? They need to be a little answerable to their constituency, they need to exhibit a little leadership in terms of not just blindly following party leadership and lobbyists.

Is this whole category of law a place where the DoJ has intercepted enough sketchy conversations that they've got leverage against key Senators and Reps? That's the only thing I can think of, other than the "intelligence community" is flat out lying in the secure sessions. Since the "intelligence community" has a long history of lying, with a lot of recent scandalous reveals, you'd think that oversight committees would be a lot less willing to just believe.

So, I'm torn. Why does this keep popping up?

[duaneb]

> So, I'm torn. Why does this keep popping up?

Constituents may vote, but lobbyists pay the bills.

[rubbingalcohol]

All the big tech companies want CISA because it legalizes data sharing programs like PRISM. To date, they've been forced to do this for years under Section 702 of FISA, but the whole thing has been in breach of their privacy agreements with customers.

Remember when EFF sued AT&T for [letting the NSA wiretap their Internet backbone facilities][1]? Congress killed the lawsuit by retroactively granting immunity under the FISA Amendments Act.

CISA is just the same thing, but for newer programs like PRISM, and tech companies want the immunity because they're otherwise being exposed to major liability.

Personally, I think a better idea would be to reform Section 702 of FISA to ban programs like PRISM. The government should be required to get a warrant when they want to look at private data.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

[MichaelCrawford]

for uncle sam to get a warrant is just dandy but thats not going to protect us from organized crime or the intelligence services of other nations.

We need security that my mother can understand. dad had a top secret clearance so mom understands why she needs to shred paper documents.

ive had no such luck explaining to her how to maintain her privacy with her imac.

[MichaelCrawford]

government contractors pay the lobbyists. consider that the very first cray was purchased by the nsa.

[shostack]

>Is this whole category of law a place where the DoJ has intercepted enough sketchy conversations that they've got leverage against key Senators and Reps?

That's all I can think of too after reading Daniel Suarez' "Influx." With the resources and information at their disposal I would not put it past them to take this approach.

That raises the question of how we can change the system if we have to assume some sort of blackmail like that might be taking place. Is there a workaround?

[bediger4000]

Attorney General Alberto Gonzalez obtained this sort of leverage against Representative Jane Harman: http://www.salon.com/2009/04/20/harman/

I was amazed that this story had such short legs. It seems like a big deal to me, a really big deal.

[shostack]

Now just think about how something like the recent government hack[1] would play out on a wider scale.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/06/24/hackers-sto...

[DubiousPusher]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_triangle_(US_politics)