EFF to Congress: Stop the Cybersurveillance Bills
Two things.<p>There are a huge number of information sharing programs in effect in America and these have been cornerstone initiatives for the US government to deal with espionage and sabotage operations as well as foreign propaganda. One of the main features of these information sharing acts is that, if the company onboards to information sharing voluntarily, the government garuntees the companies that the information - which usually amounts to close to all network traffic at the border and sometimes inside the corporate network and for many companies the customer records it keeps (although some are merely programs whereby only malware and hacker IPs or propaganda social media posts, etc are shared) - can not be used against the corporation for any legal purposes. This is something that many organizations, including the EFF, are not talking about.<p>Second thing. The purposes of these programs are not to combat terrorism - the defense industries of the Western world feel they need surveillance and propaganda capabilities because their superpower status is hollowing out as the world's economic base shifts to the Asia Pacific and as new challenges to Western institutions such as super- and hyper-sonic warhead delivery systems enable ICBMs to land payloads across the globe now in under 40 minutes. It is challenges to the old order that make our democratic institutions feel they need to reach for our rights to defend themselves. The Constitution is a peacetime document - and there is no peace for powers that feel their influence hollowing out.<p>It is not useful to discuss these programs in terms of terrorism - they are not designed for terrorism.