#Mass Surveillance

[taikeero-lecoredier]

CHAT CONTROL TO BE VOTED ON THIS THURSDAY

Original tweet

I know americans are busy with fighting KOSA but I urge you to please help us by spreading the word about this, I can't say this enough, if chat control passes, citizen's private messages will be scanned via artifical intelligence,and they must comply,otherwise theyre not allwoed to send pictures,videos,or links anymore. We have a discord server made to organize against it,with emails scripts you can use when contacting your meps : https://discord.com/invite/e7FYdYnMkS

Find your meps and tell them to vote no on this :

[eziojensenthe3rd]

So european peeps, remember chat control? Well consider making some noise atm and contacting your reps because it seems to be back on the agenda with october being a discussion on progress with december aiming to endorse it. Get cracking.

(Posting this under kosa tag cause its another bad internet bill)

[shadowvalkyrie]

The Ao3 is definitely one of the few sites on the internet I actually trust with my data, and kudos to them for being clear and transparent about their privacy policy, but the fact of the matter remains that I do look at adult content there, and they are asking me to agree to having the details of my reading habits stored on US servers, where they are a lot less protected than in the EU, and with a far-right and religious-extremist government take-over there looming over our collective heads to boot.

Surely I cannot be the only person uncomfortable with that?

[enigma2meagain]

RESTRICT Act: The TikTok Ban is a Smokescreen for PATRIOT ACT 2.0. EDIT: KOSA and EARN IT Act are also back.

EDIT: So now we not only have RESTRICT to worry about, but we also have the EARN IT Act and the Kids Online Safety Act to deal with.

See here for my previous post on it. Fuck Blumenthal and Blackburn for trying to bring back two pro-censorship bills on top of the RESTRICT Act.

And Evan provides some insight on it.

EDIT: SO it turns out that Meta IS partly behind this, but it’s also due to Silicon Valley AND the government wanting more power and control. More information in the links provided below.

EDIT: List of Sponsors has been removed for easier reading. You can still find the list in the Link to the bill itself.

EDIT: Meta-related information apparently incorrect. Updated for accuracy.

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Here is a link to the bill:

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This RESTRICT Act is EXTREMELY authoritarian and violating privacy and the 1st Amendment. It’s being disguised as being about banning TikTok, but it’s VASTLY overreaching and basically gives far too much power to the government.

How bad is this bill? Bad enough that pretty much every side of the political spectrum opposes this bill once they took a closer look at it beyond the TikTok smokescreen.

The following points were articulated succinctly by tumblr user @logan-galbraith (used with permission):

This act, while saying it's to insure American's personal information will be safe from foreign powers, it goes much deeper than that.

It will give the United States Government the power to remove and ban ANY online service they deem "a security risk" while making it so they do not need just cause and do not need to clarify or release a public statement.

It allows them the power to gather American's data without our knowledge or consent and even force us to submit documentation for anything they wish.

It protects the government from scrutiny on this, and if you try to speak about it and inform people on what it ACTUALLY allows, they can claim it to be false information and charge you.

It prevents you from using a VPN as it's seen as a breach of information security, thus they can charge you. (Uncertain on accuracy. Crossed out until more concrete information is revealed)

Failure to abide by these "guidelines" can lead to a fine up to ONE MILLION DOLLARS and/or 20 YEARS in prison.

And above all it does NOTHING to prevent AMERICAN companies from collecting and selling your data.

It doesn't matter what political party you're on, because BOTH parties in office want this. This is not about sides. This is about the ENTIRE government stripping our rights away so they can keep lining their own pockets.

And that’s what the TikTok ban really is; a smokescreen for Congress to grab more power. This is the PATRIOT ACT VERSION 2. This has BIPARTISAN support and approval from the Biden Administration.

The scary part is that this bill is being approved under THIS administration...and it’s STILL incredibly bad.

What would end up happening if an openly fascist leader were brought into power? All of sudden, ANYONE and ANYTHING could become a target or considered an adversary under the flimsiest of pretenses.

What should YOU do?

Well, the same thing as past horribly invasive bills like EARN IT and KOSA; we make a LOT of noise, and get the word out.

While there has been increasing amounts of negative press and opposition on this bill, it’s hard to tell how much this has really slowed thing down. As such, getting the word out on how bad this bill is CRUCIAL. Make it EXTREMELY CLEAR that the TikTok ban is just a smokescreen, and that this is nakedly authoritarian and dangerously unconstitutional.

And PLEASE call your Senators.

Find your 2 senators numbers here.

Fax them, email them.

Tell them they MUST oppose this bill. Calmly make it clear to them that if they support this bill, then you will vote for someone else who doesn’t go along with this blatant act of authoritarian intent. CONTACT any major human rights and cybersecurity related organizations and let them know about this bill. Get this out to any local news groups that you can.

There’s some petitions by groups like ACLU: https://go.peoplepower.org/letter/tiktok-ban

They are betting on people being blissfully ignorant of this, that it’s “Just about a Silly App”, so they will not expect you to contact them about this. They are trying to weasel this through in order to give themselves more power, and we won’t be able to do anything about it without the risk of being jailed or censored.

Here’s a part of a rough script if you need one. Add in more based on what is relevant:

"Just to make you aware I do not support the TikTok ban and I do not support the Restrict Act. If this bill is passed I will not support any official who supports that bill. Instead, I will be spending all my time and energy supporting your opponents in the primaries."

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A list of links/citations:

Truthout Article 4/02/2023: Restrict Act Critics Call the Far-Reaching “TikTok Ban” Bill a “Patriot Act 2.0”

Dailydot Article 3/10/2023: “The RESTRICT Act isn’t about banning TikTok—it’s designed to force a sale”

Lawfareblog.com 3/23/2023: “Two New Bills on TikTok and Beyond: The DATA Act and RESTRICT Act”

Reuters Article 3/28/2023: “If TikTok is banned, brace for epic First Amendment fight”

VICE Article 3/29/2023: The 'Insanely Broad' RESTRICT Act Could Ban Much More Than Just TikTok

Reason Article 3/31/2023: The RESTRICT Act Would Restrict a Lot More Than TikTok

ArsTechnica Article 3/31/2023: Meta can’t buy TikTok, so it hired GOP operatives to run a smear campaign

https://twitter.com/evan_greer/status/1642721929013362688?s=46&t=9ilK5pqP73XDblTtTbb4Qg

https://twitter.com/Imani_Barbarin/status/1640527908790837250?t=nTf7qCAcXB1s1RE-fb2Cwg&s=19

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[news4dzhozhar]

[k-wame]

JACK O'CONNELL as Jack Solomon 2019 • SEBERG • Biography • dir. Benedict Andrews

[lokiinmediasideblog]

FISA 702 HAS PASSED THE HOUSED. WE MUST STOP IT!

Fax your legislators! TELL THEM YOU WON'T VOTE FOR THEM IF THEY VOTE YES ON FISA (Fy-zah) 702!

You can also fax your legislators for FREE at:

From Edward Snowden's Twitter:

If you were mad about your House rep voting to let the government spy on you without a warrant ("FISA 702" - fy-za seven-oh-two), we may have one last shot. CALL YOUR REP @ (202) 224-3121 and say "𝗜𝗳 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘃𝗼𝘁𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝟳𝟬𝟮, 𝗜 𝘃𝗼𝘁𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗴𝗲𝘁 𝗿𝗶𝗱 𝗼𝗳 𝘆𝗼𝘂."

From the article link:

House lawmakers voted on Friday to reauthorize section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or Fisa, including a key measure that allows for warrantless surveillance of Americans. The controversial law allows for far-reaching monitoring of foreign communications, but has also led to the collection of US citizens’ messages and phone calls.

Lawmakers voted 273–147 to approve the law, which the Biden administration has for years backed as an important counterterrorism tool. An amendment that would have required authorities seek a warrant failed, in a tied 212-212 vote across party lines.

Donald Trump opposed the reauthorization of the bill, posting to his Truth Social platform on Wednesday: “KILL FISA, IT WAS ILLEGALLY USED AGAINST ME, AND MANY OTHERS. THEY SPIED ON MY CAMPAIGN!!!”

The law, which gives the government expansive powers to view emails, calls and texts, has long been divisive and resulted in allegations from civil liberties groups that it violates privacy rights. House Republicans were split in the lead-up to vote over whether to reauthorize section 702, the most contentious aspect of the bill, with Mike Johnson, the House speaker, struggling to unify them around a revised version of the pre-existing law.

Republicans shot down a procedural vote on Wednesday that would have allowed Johnson to put the bill to a floor vote, in a further blow to the speaker’s ability to find compromise within his party. Following the defeat, the bill was changed from a five-year extension to a two-year extension of section 702 – an effort to appease far-right Republicans who believe Trump will be president by the time it expires.

Section 702 allows for government agencies such as the National Security Administration to collect data and monitor the communications of foreign citizens outside of US territory without the need for a warrant, with authorities touting it as a key tool in targeting cybercrime, international drug trafficking and terrorist plots. Since the collection of foreign data can also gather communications between people abroad and those in the US, however, the result of section 702 is that federal law enforcement can also monitor American citizens’ communications.

Section 702 has faced opposition before, but it became especially fraught in the past year after court documents revealed that the FBI had improperly used it almost 300,000 times – targeting racial justice protesters, January 6 suspects and others. That overreach emboldened resistance to the law, especially among far-right Republicans who view intelligence services like the FBI as their opponent.

Trump’s all-caps post further weakened Johnson’s position. Trump’s online remarks appeared to refer to an FBI investigation into a former campaign adviser of his, which was unrelated to section 702. Other far-right Republicans such as Matt Gaetz similarly vowed to derail the legislation, putting its passage in peril.

Meanwhile, the Ohio congressman Mike Turner, Republican chair of the House Intelligence Committee, told lawmakers on Friday that failing to reauthorize the bill would be a gift to China’s government spying programs, as well as Hamas and Hezbollah.

“We will be blind as they try to recruit people for terrorist attacks in the United States,” Turner said on Friday on the House floor.

The California Democratic representative and former speaker Nancy Pelosi also gave a statement in support of passing section 702 with its warrantless surveillance abilities intact, urging lawmakers to vote against an amendment that would weaken its reach.

“I don’t have the time right now, but if members want to know I’ll tell you how we could have been saved from 9/11 if we didn’t have to have the additional warrants,” Pelosi said.

Debate over Section 702 pitted Republicans who alleged that the law was a tool for spying on American citizens against others in the GOP who sided with intelligence officials and deemed it a necessary measure to stop foreign terrorist groups. One proposed amendment called for requiring authorities to secure a warrant before using section 702 to view US citizens’ communications, an idea that intelligence officials oppose as limiting their ability to act quickly. Another sticking point in the debate was whether law enforcement should be prohibited from buying information on American citizens from data broker firms, which amass and sell personal data on tens of millions of people, including phone numbers and email addresses.

Section 702 dates back to the George W Bush administration, which secretly ran warrantless wiretapping and surveillance programs in the aftermath of the 9/11 terror attacks. In 2008, Congress passed section 702 as part of the Fisa Amendments Act and put foreign surveillance under more formal government oversight. Lawmakers have renewed the law twice since, including in 2018 when they rejected an amendment that would have required authorities to get warrants for US citizens’ data.

Last year Merrick Garland, the attorney general, and Avril Haines, director of national intelligence, sent a letter to congressional leaders telling them to reauthorize section 702. They claimed that intelligence gained from it resulted in numerous plots against the US being foiled, and that it was partly responsible for facilitating the drone strike that killed the al-Qaida leader, Ayman al-Zawahiri, in 2022.

[odinsblog]

THE UNITED STATES government has been secretly amassing a “large amount” of “sensitive and intimate information” on its own citizens, a group of senior advisers informed Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, more than a year ago.

The size and scope of the government effort to accumulate data revealing the minute details of Americans' lives are described soberly and at length by the director's own panel of experts in a newly declassified report. Haines had first tasked her advisers in late 2021 with untangling a web of secretive business arrangements between commercial data brokers and US intelligence community members.

What that report ended up saying constitutes a nightmare scenario for privacy defenders.

“This report reveals what we feared most,” says Sean Vitka, a policy attorney at the nonprofit Demand Progress. “Intelligence agencies are flouting the law and buying information about Americans that Congress and the Supreme Court have made clear the government should not have.”

In the shadow of years of inaction by the US Congress on comprehensive privacy reform, a surveillance state has been quietly growing in the legal system's cracks. Little deference is paid by prosecutors to the purpose or intent behind limits traditionally imposed on domestic surveillance activities. More craven interpretations of aging laws are widely used to ignore them. As the framework guarding what privacy Americans do have grows increasingly frail, opportunities abound to split hairs in court over whether such rights are even enjoyed by our digital counterparts.

“I’ve been warning for years that if using a credit card to buy an American’s personal information voids their Fourth Amendment rights, then traditional checks and balances for government surveillance will crumble,” Ron Wyden, a US senator from Oregon, says.

(continue reading)

[allthecanadianpolitics]

Meta will soon block some Canadian users of Facebook and Instagram from accessing or posting news content on either platform.

The move, which the social media giant announced in a blog post on Thursday, comes in reaction to the looming passage into law of Bill C-18, the Online News Act.

Facebook has said it will be forced to block news content from its platforms in Canada if the bill becomes law, something that could happen as soon as this month as the bill is currently being considered in the Senate.

Among other stipulations, the bill would require tech giants to pay Canadian media companies for linking to or otherwise repurposing their content online.

"As we prepare to comply with the legislation, we are announcing today that we will begin tests on both platforms that will limit some users and publishers from viewing or sharing some news content in Canada," Meta said. [...]

Continue Reading.

Tagging: @politicsofcanada

[taikeero-lecoredier]

Chat Control in a nutshell (please reblog this, US people)

Find out more about Chat Control here TAKE ACTION HERE ! OR HERE Calling is much more efficient ! The latter link will redirect you to the official websites of your respective reps. Under the "read more", you will find what you need to say/write when contacting your reps. You will also find an alternate format of this comic,and I give explicit permission for people to translate it and spread it anywhere for awareness. Credit really not needed, I don't care about that rn Even if this is a EU proposal, I am urging Americans to also share this, since it goes hand in hand with KOSA. DON'T FORGET TO JOIN OUR DISCORD SERVER AGAINST CHAT CONTROL ! https://discord.com/invite/e7FYdYnMkS

(Latest update on Chat Control was the 12 september 2024) This is a little long, so feel free to shorten it as you wish : Subject line: "2022/0155(COD) Dear Sir/Madam, I am writing to express my grave concerns regarding the proposed introduction of "Chat Control" This measure poses a serious threat to the privacy and fundamental rights of all EU citizens and stands in stark contradiction to the core principles that the European Union seeks to uphold. The proposed Chat Control contravenes Articles 7 and 8 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, which guarantee the right to respect for private and family life and the protection of personal data. The indiscriminate surveillance of private messages without specific suspicion or cause directly violates these fundamental rights. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) sets out stringent rules for the processing of personal data. The proposed indiscriminate surveillance and scanning of private messages before end-to-end encryption is fundamentally incompatible with the principles of data minimization and purpose limitation enshrined in the GDPR. Specifically, Articles 5 and 6 of the GDPR, which govern the lawfulness and principles of data processing, would be violated by the introduction of such measures. The implementation of Client-Side Scanning (CSS) on devices means that all messages and files are scanned on the user's device before being encrypted and sent. This effectively nullifies the protection offered by end-to-end encryption and opens the door to misuse and additional security vulnerabilities. Moreover, the technical capability to scan such content could be exploited by malicious actors to circumvent or manipulate surveillance mechanisms. Such far-reaching surveillance measures not only endanger privacy but also freedom of expression. The knowledge that their private messages are being scanned and monitored could significantly restrict individuals' willingness to freely express themselves. Additionally, trust in digital communication platforms would be severely undermined. I urge you to take a strong stance against this disproportionate and unlawful measure. The privacy and digital rights of EU citizens must be safeguarded. It is imperative that we protect our fundamental rights and ensure transparency in the decision-making processes of our leaders. For more detailed information on the proposal and its implications, please refer to the following resource: Link to Netzpolitik article. https://www.patrick-breyer.de/rat-soll-chatkontrolle-durchwinken-werde-jetzt-aktiv/ Thank you for your attention to this critical matter. Sincerely, [Name] Art. 10 GG , Art. 8 & 11 EU Charta , Art. 8 EMRK (Alternate comic here V)

[eziojensenthe3rd]

[thoughtportal]

This week, Congressional leaders are again trying to quietly and quickly get Congress to approve unconstitutional, warrantless mass surveillance.1

Rather than allowing debate on major privacy protections, some members are trying to jam an extension of a controversial warrantless surveillance power — Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) — into a “must-pass” defense authorization bill.1

Section 702 has been abused in ways that violate Americans’ fundamental civil liberties and civil rights. FBI agents have used 702 to search through troves of warrantlessly acquired communications for conversations with tens of thousands of protestors, racial justice activists, journalists, donors to a Congressional campaign, and countless others.2

We must fight for privacy protections and stop Congress from sneaking 702’s extension into “must-pass” legislation!

Warrantless government surveillance of Americans under Section 702 is out of control, and particularly hurts marginalized communities. The large number of documented abuses by agencies like the NSA, CIA, and FBI include searches for: 141 racial justice protestors, two men “of Middle Eastern descent” who were handling cleaning supplies, mosques that were intentionally mislabeled to prevent oversight, and a state court judge who reported civil rights violations to the FBI.2

Even though the Fourth Amendment protects our right to keep our information private, the government is collecting troves of our data without a warrant.

Any extension of Section 702 would allow the government to obtain new year-long Section 702 certifications at the beginning of the year — allowing this unaccountable, abusive government spying to continue into 2025.

Congressional leaders know that mass surveillance is unpopular, which is why they want to quietly slip it into the defensive authorization bill. We need to let them know that we’re watching and won’t let it happen.

Sources:

Brennan Center, "Coalition Letter Urges Congressional Leaders to Keep Reauthorization of Section 702 Out of NDAA," November 21, 2023.

Brennan Center, “FISA Section 702: Civil Rights Abuses,” November 27, 2023.

Click here to sign

[thefreethoughtprojectcom]

Mass surveillance is the Deep State’s version of a “gift” that keeps on giving…back to the Deep State.

Read More: https://thefreethoughtproject.com/government-surveillance/youd-better-watch-out-the-surveillance-state-is-making-a-list-and-youre-on-it

#TheFreeThoughtProject

[smashing-yng-man]

Hackers (1995)

[k-wame]

JACK O'CONNELL as Jack Solomon 2019 • SEBERG • Biography • dir. Benedict Andrews