It came across like an email forwarded from grandma: Facebook is listening to everything you say.<\/p>\n
Of course, it wasn\u2019t true.<\/p>\n
The social media network last year rolled out an optional feature that turns on your cellphone for 15 seconds to record what you\u2019re doing and help you post status updates. The information isn\u2019t stored, and it\u2019s completely voluntary.<\/p>\n
It sounded innocuous, but this feature was fractured through the prism of Internet discussion and gossip. Facebook isn\u2019t listening to everything you say.<\/p>\n
The federal government, on the other hand, just might be.<\/p>\n
That sentence would sound like the language of tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy theorists but for the revelations of Edward Snowden. While you might be ambivalent (as we are) about the whistleblower\u2019s flight to Russia, the information he has shared shows the depth to which the federal government is eavesdropping on ordinary Americans.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, Congress appears to be a witting accomplice in this eavesdropping.<\/p>\n
Last week, the U.S. Senate voted 74-21 to pass the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, a bill whose name is so misleading that it staggers even our cynicism.<\/p>\n
CISA, as it is known in brief, supposedly allows the federal government to help companies protect their information from hackers. It may indeed do that, but its most significant effect is that it effectively creates a backdoor for the federal government to snoop into the files of ordinary Americans.<\/p>\n
CISA allows companies to share records with federal groups like the National Security Agency. That agency in turn provides reports to the companies that explain where they are vulnerable to hacking.<\/p>\n
If you decide that you, an individual, don\u2019t want your records shared, well, you\u2019re out of luck. CISA prohibits you from suing to block the transfer. <\/p>\n
The companies are supposed to clear all identifying marks from the information, but the bill contains easy loopholes to get around that requirement.<\/p>\n
The bottom line is that this bill allows companies that hold our information to easily and secretly share it with the federal government. Given the government\u2019s track record on surveillance, we don\u2019t trust it.<\/p>\n
Nor, it appears, does the technology industry. Companies including Apple, Twitter, Yelp and Salesforce have all stated they are firmly against CISA.<\/p>\n
The federal government is required to get a warrant to listen in on an American\u2019s phone calls or read someone\u2019s mail. This bill would allow more warrantless analysis of Americans\u2019 lives, and Congress should not allow it.<\/p>\n
Sen. Dan Sullivan, Alaska\u2019s junior representative to the Senate, cast one of the 21 votes against CISA last week. \u201cI voted against CISA because it does not adequately protect Americans\u2019 privacy (or) engender confidence in fed. gov\u2019t data security,\u201d he tweeted after his vote.<\/p>\n
Sen. Lisa Murkowski, unfortunately, voted for the bill.<\/p>\n
Alaska\u2019s two senators and Rep. Don Young will have another opportunity to consider CISA when the version passed by the U.S. House is combined with the one passed by the Senate.<\/p>\n
For Alaskans\u2019 sake, we hope they\u2019ll vote against the final version. <\/p>\n
The Empire has long believed in personal privacy and public discourse. Given the federal government\u2019s repeated infringement upon both, we feel we cannot trust it with this new authority.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It came across like an email forwarded from grandma: Facebook is listening to everything you say. Of course, it wasn\u2019t true. The social media network last year rolled out an optional feature that turns on your cellphone for 15 seconds to record what you\u2019re doing and help you post<\/a> status updates. The information isn\u2019t stored, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":8,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-26575","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-opinion"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26575\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26575"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=26575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}