The House of Representatives yesterday passed an extremely disturbing bill that you need to know about. The bill, H.R. 1981 requires your Internet Service Provider (ISP) to track and record for 12 months all your online activities such as what web sites you visit and what content you post online.
Additionally, the information would then be available to the government, in secret and without any court oversight, based on weak and outdated electronic privacy laws. Can you say Lulsec or Anon hacking this database and just letting all your data go on the Internet? This is crazy but don’t fret, there is something you can do about it.
Since this is just a bill and not yet law, it can still be overturned. To help stop this bill from becoming law, you will need to fill out this form here and submit it. It will be sent to your state representative in an attempt to get everyone to overturn this bill. Please make sure to share this with anyone you know that uses the Internet (should be everyone!) to help get this bill overturned.
EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston had this to say about today's vote:
"A last-minute rewrite of the bill expands the information that commercial Internet providers are required to store to include customers' names, addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and temporarily-assigned IP addresses, some committee members suggested. By a 7-16 vote, the panel rejected an amendment that would have clarified that only IP addresses must be stored."The data retention mandate in this bill would treat every Internet user like a criminal and threaten the online privacy and free speech rights of every American, as lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have recognized. Requiring Internet companies to redesign and reconfigure their systems to facilitate government surveillance of Americans' expressive activities is simply un-American. Such a scheme would be as objectionable to our Founders as the requiring of licenses for printing presses or the banning of anonymous pamphlets. Today's vote is therefore very disappointing, but we are especially thankful to GOP Representatives Sensenbrenner, Issa and Chaffetz, who chose principle over party-line in opposing this dangerous tech mandate. We hope that bipartisan opposition will grow as the bill makes its way to the House floor and more lawmakers are educated about this anti-privacy, anti-free speech, anti-innovation proposal.
What is your thoughts on this, leave you message in the comments section of this post.
1 comments:
This is really un-expected and pretty freaking scary, if this bill becomes law your entire online identity, all your online purchasing and your entire browsing history becomes property of the US Government. This is another wonderful step forward for a country that already has 1 out of every 100 people locked behind bars. If this becomes law I'm dropping my internet connections, both home and cell. It'll be a bitch to rely on public WiFi but I'd rather that then have the cops show up at my door for downloading an episode of Futurama or something.
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