omnibus – Techdirt (original) (raw)

Free PACER Access Heads To The Back Burner Again As Legislators Pull It From 2023 Budget Bill

from the your-government-not-at-work dept

[INT: Midwestern living room, Christmas morning 2022]:

Children: Thanks for all of these consumer goods, Daddy. We know you mean well. But we just want to know whether we’ll ever see free access to federal courtroom documents in our lifetime.

Me: [long pause while stroking my magnificent beard] I don’t know, kids. I just don’t know.

[BELLS CHIME]

[ENTER STAGE RIGHT, a cloaked figure carrying a big book or something]: Let me show what life would be like if Breckin Meyer had never been born! [smoke effect]

Kids: Who?

Me: Whom.

Kids: Whom?

Cloaked figure: I’m sorry. I think I have the wrong address. Excuse me. [different smoke effect]

This dramatization of recent events omits or alters a few key details. I will correct those here:

1. My children are in their late teens and have not called me “Daddy” for more than a decade.
2. My children, despite their advanced age, have never accessed a federal court document, nor have they expressed any desire to do so.
3. I don’t have a beard, magnificent or otherwise.
4. Breckin Meyer is undoubtedly respected in his field.
5. “Who” is the correct response.

Back to the issue at hand. PACER — the federal system for online access to court documents — is a Web 0.5 abomination. Despite collecting millions in fees every year, the system has not seen any serious upgrades to elevate it to the bare minimum web users expect… like utilizing a functional search system, or fixing its habit of incorrectly calculating “pages” to the point of being sued.

For years, legislators have attempted to make PACER access free. And it definitely should be. After all, taxpayers have already paid for the creation of the documents and dockets the US Courts system feels comfortable charging $0.10/page to access as though internet users were burning through toner cartridges with every PDF download or docket page served up online.

The obscene amount the federal court system collects from PACER users is supposed to be used to update online systems and, believe it or not, lower costs for PACER users. That has not happened. Instead, the federal judiciary has used this windfall to make things better for those who physically show up at courthouses, purchasing big screen TVs and comfy chairs for those watching and/or overseeing these proceedings. Left out of the equation are the millions of Americans who pay in but never see the court machinery pay out.

The only entity standing between us and free PACER access is the federal court system. It has been the only one to argue (without evidence) that it would cost taxpayers billions to give those same taxpayers free PACER access. Legislators have yet to surmount this single barrier, suggesting free access isn’t the priority they claim it is when they author bills. (To be fair, legislators have a lot of issues to address at any given time. To be less fair [but perhaps more honest], legislators don’t have to pay for their PACER access, which means allowing these bills to die doesn’t affect their personal bottom lines.)

The judiciary has claimed free access would require an offset of nearly $2 billion a year. Researchers and legislators took a look at these claims and called bullshit. In their estimation, free PACER access would only result in a net loss of a little over $1 million/year. Roughly a year later, the Congressional Budget Office announced its findings. The CBO concluded it would actually make the government money to give free access to millions of Americans while only charging fees to PACER “whales,” which tend to be large corporations engaged in litigation and/or trawling PACER to scour documents filed in federal court by their competitors.

_Enacting the Open Courts Act would generate 175millioninnetrevenuesoveradecade,offsettingthe175 million in net revenues over a decade, offsetting the 175millioninnetrevenuesoveradecade,offsettingthe161 million in mandatory spending the bill would prompt_…

So, on one hand, we have a federal court system that truly loves buying TVs and couches with the money it’s supposed to be using to cut PACER costs for Americans. On the other, we have NGOs, legislators, First Amendment advocates, and members of the general public advocating for free PACER access. And we have a single, extremely self-interested party claiming it’s prohibitively expensive to serve up PDFs and search results in an era of dirt cheap storage and ubiquitous internet use.

Who would win?

Well, as Reuters reports, it would be the horse-sized duck, as personified by the US Courts system and legislators apparently unwilling to add a bill that would save the government money to the latest government spending bill.

U.S. lawmakers have left a proposal to make the federal judiciary’s PACER online court records system free out of a sprawling, $1.66 trillion spending measure unveiled on Tuesday, a setback for advocates as the current Congress nears its end.

Supporters of the Open Courts Act had been pushing to get the stalled, bipartisan legislation attached to the omnibus spending measure, which boosts overall spending on the judiciary by nearly 6% to $8.461 billion in fiscal year 2023.

Unfortunately, the Reuters report relies on “facts” delivered by the judiciary, which continues to insist it would cost millions to cede any ground to taxpayers. This self-serving estimate has been undercut repeatedly, and yet it somehow remains a reprinted talking point whenever free PACER access is up for debate. Reuters repeats it here, which does nothing but serve a judiciary that would rather rake in discretionary funds year after year, rather than increase the level of service it’s obligated to provide to the public.

I don’t know which legislators are to blame for this failure to push through an amendment that, at worst, would break even. But I’m going to blame somebody. This is unvarnished horseshit.

Rather than mandating changes to PACER, lawmakers in an accompanying explanatory statement said they would be expecting the judiciary to update them on its already-underway plans to modernize PACER and a related electronic case management system.

The US Courts system has had years to update PACER with the fees it collects. It hasn’t. All this statement says is that government business will continue as usual, which means PACER will still be an overpriced clusterfuck and that their constituents can expect to be charged ridiculous rates for PDF downloads for the foreseeable future.

There are several big issues the federal government needs to address. And maybe this one seems unimportant in that context. But to hold off on pushing this through reeks of laziness, if not cowardice. The US Courts system has yet to show it has any interest in improving PACER. And its math has been called into question multiple times. When a budget is passed, it makes sense to add efforts that may, at worst, break even. And legislators couldn’t even do that here.

PACER still sucks. It still costs too much. The system overseeing it is engaged in illegal use of PACER funds. But that’s the status quo legislators have decided to protect. I’m sorry, kids. For now, free PACER remains just as theoretical as a Breckin Meyer Golden Globes nomination.

Filed Under: free pacer, judiciary, omnibus, open courts act, pacer, us courts

Congress Trying To Sneak Through Internet Link Tax To Funnel Cash To Private Equity Firms That Are Destroying Local Journalism

from the link-taxes-are-bad-news dept

Congress has a bad habit. They have stopped passing substantive legislation through normal procedure, debate and votes. The legislative process as designed by our Founders is not happening. Instead, Congress is saving most of its actual policy-making legislation for large end-of-the-year bills that can combine hundreds of separate pieces of legislation. And if reports are accurate, we could be shaping up for the granddaddy of them all this December. This process must change, particularly for bills as highly controversial and constitutionally concerning as the misleadingly named Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA).

The inclusion of controversial and poorly vetted legislation in these mega legislative packages is nothing new. In 2020 as lawmakers rushed off to their winter holidays, Congress included language in must-pass COVID relief that made unauthorized commercial streaming a felony that could lead to ten years in jail. Another controversial and likely unconstitutional small claims copyright tribunal was created at the same time, resulting in a colossal waste of time, money and resources. The CASE Act had only one hearing that had no witnesses from outside industry before inclusion in must-pass lame duck legislation.

This is a terrible way to make sound public policy.

This year, the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act (JCPA), is taking the lead as one of the most troubling riders being considered for the end of this Congress. This legislation uses antitrust law to circumvent constitutional guardrails for freedom of speech within copyright law, will boost the hedge funds and big media corporations already hurting local news, and would force Internet platforms to carry and pay for even the most extreme and false content coming out of “news” organizations.

Despite an outpouring of opposition from twenty diverse organizations – ranging from small publishers, civil society groups, and copyright law experts – and significant concerns raised by bipartisan Senators at the markup, there has not been sufficient public discussion of the harmful, reverberating impacts the JCPA would have on local news and the online information landscape. Flouting legislative debate and regular order is bad enough. It’s even worse when prospective legislation like the JCPA violates the Constitution and is poised to overhaul how consumers access information online.

Since massive media conglomerates like Gannett and Alden Global Capital stand to reap a financial windfall if it passes, it’s no surprise that the JCPA was drafted in conjunction with these conglomerates’ lobbyists behind closed doors. This insular process resulted in the bill’s language only being shared the day before a Senate markup and many Senate Judiciary members also raised serious concerns about the JCPA’s constitutionality and its intentional beneficiaries: massive media conglomerates.
Additionally, the process purposely turned a blind eye and ignored the many more structural problems facing local news. An FTC discussion draft on the issues facing local journalism found that the approach being taken by the JCPA is ill-advised.

So far, the legislative process surrounding the JCPA has been opaque. What is clear, however, is that massive media conglomerates’ fingerprints are all over it. Despite the best efforts of hedge funds and umbrella corporations like Gannett and Alden Global Capital to force this through Congress, there are numerous policymakers willing to acknowledge the JCPA’s expansive unintended impacts. Now, it’s time for Congress as a whole to recognize that legislation as controversial and constitutionally concerning as the JCPA deserves careful consideration on its own. If the JPCA cannot stand on its merits alone, then Congress should not include it as a rider on end-of-year legislation.

_Josh Lamel is the Executive Director of the Re:Create Coalition.

Filed Under: antitrust, competition, copyright, jcpa, journalism, link tax, must pass, omnibus
Companies: alden capital, gannett

Apparently Trump Refuses To Allow The Government To Do Anything At All Until The Open Internet Is Destroyed

from the we're-doing-what-now? dept

Well, the government is closing out the year with quite a mess. As threatened, President Trump today vetoed the massive National Defense Authorization Act, living up to his promise to veto it if it didn’t include the complete revocation of Section 230 of the Communications Act, which has nothing to do with funding our military. Trump, for no reason at all, says that repealing Section 230 is important for “national security”, which makes no sense at all (nor does he provide any rationale for this statement). Senate Armed Service chair and Trump buddy Senator Jim Inhofe had already threatened to override the veto should Trump go this route — and has (correctly!) said that 230 has nothing at all to do with the NDAA. Inhofe has already responded to Trump’s veto by asking Congress to “join me in making sure our troops have the resources and equipment they need to defend this nation.” In other words, he’s asking Congress to override the veto.

As for 230, Inhofe (ridiculously) claims that he does support a repeal of the law, but it should be in a separate legislative vehicle, and not the NDAA:

We can and should use another legislative vehicle to repeal Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act ? a priority @realDonaldTrump and I share.

— Sen. Jim Inhofe (@JimInhofe) December 23, 2020

Meanwhile, the other big bills — the omnibus government funding bill and the COVID relief bill, which are now tied together at the hip — have also somehow been dragged into the Section 230 mess. Pretty much everyone assumed that after Congress voted overwhelmingly for both bills on Monday (as stupid as they were), Trump would sign them. After all, the White House was a part of the negotiations with Congressional leadership to come to the “compromise” that made it through.

But, last night, Trump threw a wrench in the works by claiming he wouldn’t sign either unless the amount going to qualified individuals was 2,000ratherthan2,000 rather than 2,000ratherthan600. This seriously messed with his Republican colleagues who had pushed repeatedly to keep that number as low as possible. But the Democrats rightly seized on Trump’s demands for $2,000 to agree with him and say they’ll offer a revised bill with that more generous number.

Somehow, Section 230 had remained outside of the discussion over the funding bill and the stimulus bill, but Senator (who else?) Lindsey Graham has brought the two together by saying that he’ll support the $2,000 part of the stimulus bill… if it also revokes 230. He’s been tweeting more and more about this all day, and is now claiming that a refusal to revoke Section 230 means that Congress “cares more about big tech than working Americans.”

That is, of course, utterly ridiculous. Section 230 protects working Americans more than it protects “big tech.” It protects us posting on social media. It protects us forwarding emails. It protects us when we retweet nonsense. It makes the open internet possible, and enables the next generation of competitors to “big tech” to exist. Lindsey Graham’s weird grandstanding about this is nonsense. Taking away 230 wouldn’t rein in big tech, it would lock in big tech. They have large legal teams and can handle the disruption. This is why Facebook already supports major 230 reform. Zuckerberg knows that it would harm upstart competitors way more than Facebook.

There can be legitimate debates about Section 230 and how the open internet should work. The fact that it’s suddenly being held hostage as part of the negotiations on three massive — and totally unrelated to the internet — bills is simply a case study in how broken Congress is, and how cynical politicians like Lindsey Graham have become.

Filed Under: congress, covid, donald trump, government funding, jim inhofe, lindsey graham, ndaa, omnibus, section 230, stimulus

Congress (Once Again) Sells Out To Hollywood: Sneaks CASE Act And Felony Streaming Bill Into Government Funding Omnibus

from the but-why? dept

As we warned about earlier this month, it appears that Congress has in fact put two very controversial copyright provisions into the government funding “omnibus” bill that will be voted on later today. As you may have heard, last night Congress worked out a “deal” on both a 900billionCovidrelief/stimuluspackageandthegiant900 billion Covid relief/stimulus package and the giant 900billionCovidrelief/stimuluspackageandthegiant1.4 trillion omnibus government funding bill, which is being voted on today. There had been concerns raised all month about how — under pressure from Hollywood — Congress might try to sneak two dangerous copyright provisions and one trademark provision into the omnibus.

Since the “deal” was announced last night, people have been scrambling to find out what’s actually in the fucking bill which is being voted on shortly. It’s just come out that, indeed, all three controversial copyright and trademark provisions are in the bill. The CASE Act will supercharge copyright trolling exactly at a time when we need to fix the law to have less trolling. And the felony streaming bill (which was only just revealed last week with no debate or discussion, includes provisions that are so confusing and vague no one is sure if it makes sites like Twitch into felons.

The fact that these are getting added to the must pass government funding bill is just bad government. And Congressional leadership should hear about this.

The full omnibus bill is over 3,000 pages long, so you can search through it for your favorite bit of nonsense. Felony streaming is on page 72. The CASE Act starts on page 77.

There’s a reason that copyright is generally controversial. Small changes can not only have a massive impact, that impact can be on the public’s ability to express themselves. The idea that two such bills should be jammed through in this manner is a total and complete travesty. People should be mad about this and should hold the Congressional leadership of both parties responsible. This is not good governance. This is sucking up to Hollywood at the expense of the public.

Filed Under: case act, congress, copyright, felony streaming, free speech, omnibus, small claims, thom tillis

Not This Again: Senator Tillis Tries To Slide Dangerous Felony Streaming Bill Into Must Pass Government Funding Bill

from the guys,-we've-done-this-before... dept

We’ve documented that Senator Thom Tillis is working on a massive copyright reform bill for which he’s asked stakeholders for input (we provided some). He’s expected to unveil that bill next week (which seems like a suspiciously short turnaround from asking for ideas to actually releasing a bill). Yet, apparently, he decided that he couldn’t even wait for that process to play out to try to push forward the latest incarnation of the infamous felony streaming bill which Tillis is pushing to add to the must-approve government spending omnibus bill (similar to how others are trying to add the CASE Act to that bill).

If you don’t recall, felony streaming has been a goal of the recording industry for the past decade. Back in 2011, Senator Amy Klobuchar pushed the bill, and even Justin Bieber spoke out against it, noting that he built his entire fanbase by streaming his own covers of songs on YouTube. At the time, Bieber said that rather than locking up people for streaming copyright covered content online, we should lock up Senator Klobuchar for trying to pass such a bill.

Even if you don’t trust Justin Bieber’s legal analysis of the bill, it might help to read the analysis done by Harvard law professor Jonathan Zittrain, who highlighted just how dangerous a felony streaming law would be — likely turning millions of individuals into potential felons, should law enforcement suddenly decide to turn on them. The whole idea of making streaming copyright covered works a felony is ridiculous. As it stands now, it can be a misdemeanor, and even that is crazy. Copyright should be a civil issue, not a criminal one. The standards to make it criminal are insanely low — such that tons of people could face criminal liability for doing things that seem perfectly normal. The threat to free speech (which is the key thing we raised in our comments on Tillis’ larger copyright reform) should not be ignored:

?A felony streaming bill would likely be a chill on expression,? said Katharine Trendacosta, associate director of policy and activism with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. ?We already see that it?s hard enough in just civil copyright and the DMCA for people to feel comfortable asserting their rights. The chance of a felony would impact both expression and innovation.?

Of course, as the American Prospect article notes, it’s not at all difficult to understand why Tillis is trying to shove such a dangerous, anti-free speech bill through an omnibus spending bill, rather than having to debate and defend it through normal process. Because this:

Tillis, the chairman of the Intellectual Property Subcommittee, was recently re-elected for another six-year term by a margin of less than 2% over his Democratic opponent. In the final stretch of his campaign, Tillis received a surge of campaign contributions from PACs affiliated with entertainment companies and trade groups that lobby Congress for aggressive copyright enforcement against internet users, including prison time for unauthorized streaming.

You don’t say. How odd. Or, rather, how totally expected, and totally corrupt.

In the third and fourth quarters of 2020, Tillis? campaign and leadership PAC received donations from PACs affiliated with the Motion Picture Association, Sony Pictures, ASCAP, Universal Music Group, Comcast & NBCUniversal, The Internet and Television Association, Salem Media Group, Warner Music, and others in the entertainment and cable industry that seek to suppress the unauthorized sharing of content. Many other entertainment industry PACs gave Tillis contributions earlier in the 2019-20 cycle, totaling well over $100,000, according to Federal Election Commission records. Executives of Fox Corporation, Sony Entertainment, Charter Communications, and CBS also made large donations to Tillis in the third quarter of this year.

After the Prospect article linked above and quoted here began to get attention, Tillis took to Twitter to push back on it, claiming it’s inaccurate, and that his (still unpublished) proposal is “narrowly tailored” such that the DOJ can only use it to “prosecute commercial criminal organizations.” Which… is the same argument that was made a decade ago with Klobuchar’s similar bill. But it ignores that the standards for what makes a “commercial criminal organization” regarding copyright are insanely low. Under current law, it means that you gain some sort of “commercial advantage or financial gain” in which you reproduce or distribute (or, in this case stream) at least 10 works, “with a retail value of more than $2,500.”

Assuming this definition is then applied to streaming as well, all it really means is that if a streamer uses 10 copyright works, within a 180 day period, for which he or she gains some sort of financial gain, they can now be considered “commercial criminal organization.” That’s… a ton of Twitch and YouTube streamers.

And, either way, if the bill is really nothing to be concerned about, why hasn’t Tillis released the text and why is he pushing it into this must pass bill?

Filed Under: christmas tree bill, copyright, criminal copyright, felony streaming, government funding, omnibus, thom tillis

House Staples Extraterritorial Search Permissions Onto 2,232-Page Budget Bill; Passes It

from the hearty-debate-was-enjoyed-by-none dept

Just as the Supreme Court is considering the legality of extraterritorial demands for communications held by US internet service providers in overseas data storage, Congress is doing all it can to short-circuit the debate. Tucked away towards the back of a 2,200-page spending bill is something called the “Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act” or (of course) “CLOUD Act.” (h/t Steve Vladeck)

The CLOUD Act [PDF – starting at p. 2201] would make any decision by the Supreme Court extraneous. If it agrees with Microsoft — as lower courts have — that the US has no right to demand communications stored overseas with a normal warrant, the Act would immediately overturn the decision. If it decides against Microsoft, it will be aligned with the new law. As it stands now, the route most likely to be taken by the Supreme Court is a punt. Legislation on point is in play and the Court will probably be more than happy to let legislators make the final call.

Beyond the obvious problem of giving US law enforcement permission to use regular warrants to bypass mutual assistance treaties, the law also allows for reciprocation. We can’t go around waving SCA (Stored Communications Act) warrants in foreign lands without expecting pushback from locals. So, we’ll have to give foreign countries the same privileges, even if the criminal charges being investigated wouldn’t be considered criminal acts in this country and the country enjoying this reciprocation doesn’t care much about its own citizens’ rights and privacy.

The EFF is especially critical of the shoehorned-in CLOUD Act. As it points out, the law would result in backdoor searches of anyone’s communications via reciprocal communication demands. In the US, we’ve already seen the Fourth Amendment circumvented by US government agencies via their access to NSA collections. The same would happen in reverse when other countries start playing by the CLOUD Act’s new rules.

When foreign police use their power under CLOUD Act executive agreements to collect a foreign target’s data from a U.S. company, they might also collect data belonging to a non-target U.S. person who happens to be communicating with the foreign target. Within the numerous, combined foreign investigations allowed under the CLOUD Act, it is highly likely that related seizures will include American communications, including email, online chat, video calls, and internet voice calls.

Under the CLOUD Act’s rules for these data demands from foreign police to U.S. service providers, this collection of Americans’ data can happen without any prior, individualized review by a foreign or American judge. Also, it can happen without the foreign police needing to prove the high level of suspicion required by the U.S. Fourth Amendment: probable cause.

In addition, the law allows the US to enter into agreements with almost any country on earth, even those whose respect for human rights is nearly nonexistent. There’s a provision in the law that says countries must meet a vague human rights standards before they’re allowed to start searching US-based cloud services, but those guidelines are roughly 100% useless. Unless a more rigorous vetting standard is applied, countries like Turkey could soon be trawling for US persons’ communications. As the ACLU points out, Turkey might still be considered to be compliant with the humans rights guidelines despite its ever-increasing level of citizen-directed abuse.

For example, in early 2014, Turkey may have met the CLOUD Act’s vague human rights criteria; Freedom House even rated it a three and four on its index for political and civil rights. But since the attempted coup in mid-2016, the Turkish government has arrested more than 50,000 people — including journalists and activists such as the chair and director of Amnesty International’s Turkey section — many on bogus terrorism charges. According to U.N. experts: “Most of these accusations of terrorism are based solely on actions such as downloading data protection software, including the ByLock application, publishing opinions disagreeing with the Government’s anti-terrorism policies, organizing demonstrations, or providing legal representation for other activists.”

Under the CLOUD Act, neither Congress nor U.S. courts would be able to prompt a review or a temporary moratorium for a case like Turkey. Users, without notice, would have little practical ability to lodge complaints with the U.S. government or providers. Even if the U.S. government were to take action, the CLOUD Act fails to ensure a sufficiently quick response to protect activists and others whose safety could be threatened.

What few positives the bill provides revolve around challenging demands for communications. The bill provides avenues for US tech companies to challenge orders targeting foreign servers, as well as pushing back against foreign government demands for communications held in the US. But these will mainly be of use to the largest tech companies with the manpower and legal acumen to throw at the problem. Smaller companies will likely just find themselves handing over anything to anyone who comes asking, rather than risk punitive action by domestic and foreign governments.

And the standards are extremely weak. While the bill claims to hold foreign countries to US standards, it never specifically says foreign countries demanding communications need to have US-equivalent rights. It refers to “international universal human rights” which sounds great, but this is a feel-good term that isn’t recognized by US or international law.

Even if communications are subject to some restrictions, metadata isn’t. Anything foreign governments collect on American citizens can be handed over to the US government without further legal review. And it carves out a hole for wiretapping electronic communications, allowing demands like these to bypass the privacy protections of the Wiretap Act.

Considering it’s been stapled to end of must-pass funding bill, chances are the bill will receive zero debate before being forwarded to the president. The House has already passed its version, which means the Senate needs to step up to block the CLOUD Act stuffed into its spending bill. As we saw during the last several months of 2016, very few reps were in any hurry to challenge the expansion of Rule 41 authorities, despite having more than a year to generate opposition. Even when time is a luxury, inaction is the preferred response. The CLOUD Act, hidden under more than 2,000 pages of funding requests, is probably as close to a sure thing as it’s ever been. And it will do little more than further damage privacy protections across the globe.

Filed Under: cloud act, extraterritorial, jurisdiction, omnibus, privacy, search, stored communications act, surveillance, warrants

Want To Know How Ridiculous The Omnibus Bill Is? It Has A Meaningless Porn Filter Clause Four Times

from the say-what? dept

Following Congress passing the Omnibus spending bill, it of course did not take long for President Obama to sign the bill, meaning that the fake cybersecurity bill/actual surveillance bill, is now law. Particularly ridiculous is that in his little speech about it, Obama talked about how he “wasn’t wild about everything in it” but that he was happy that it was a bill “without ideological provisions.” Except, you know, for the many ones that did get in there.

But, what do you expect with a 2000+ page bill that Congress was only given a couple of days to look at before voting on. Zach Carter, over at Huffington Post has examples of a couple of ridiculous provisions in the omnibus, starting with a ban on giving any funding to ACORN, the organization that was the target of scorn from Republicans a few years back. So what’s so ridiculous about that? Following the pile on against ACORN years ago the organization shut down. It hasn’t existed in years. Preventing funding for it seems, you know, kinda pointless, as it doesn’t exist.

But it’s the other wacky provision that caught my attention. Apparently this provision is in the omnibus no less than four times in different places:

“None of the funds made available in this Act may be used to maintain or establish a computer network unless such network blocks the viewing, downloading, and exchanging of pornography.”

Apparently, this little clause has become so standard, you can find it in earlier funding bills as well. It’s the 2013 funding bill the the 2012 funding bill and many more, I assume.

And, as Carter notes, this language is “completely meaningless,” but it’s still in there four times. Just because.

So Congress can’t seem to get much of anything done, but it does pass an omnibus bill that includes a weird meaningless porn filter requirement four times… and a damaging surveillance bill. And you wonder why people dislike and distrust Congress.

Filed Under: cisa, cybersecurity, omnibus, president obama

As Expected, Congress Approves CISA (As Part Of Omnibus)

from the selling-out-your-privacy dept

This is hardly a surprise since Speaker Paul Ryan put his (weak, privacy destroying) version of CISA into the “must pass” omnibus funding bill, retitled as the Cybersecurity Act of 2015, but the bill was easily passed by Congress this morning, 316 to 113. Frankly, 113 votes against was much higher than I expected. Below are the votes:

—- YEAS 316 —

—- NAYS 113 —

—- NOT VOTING 5 —

Filed Under: cisa, cybersecurity, omnibus, omnicisa

White House Supports Privacy Destroying CISA, Despite Past Promises It Would Not

from the this-is-a-problem dept

In the past, President Obama has threatened to veto any cybersecurity bill that undermines privacy and civil liberties. Of course, people didn’t quite believe that was true, and now that we see the final cybersecurity bill, the bastardized CISA has been attached to the “must pass” omnibus spending bill, and clearly is a disaster on privacy issues, what do you think the White House is saying?

Well, they love it, of course:

“We are pleased that the Omnibus includes cybersecurity information sharing legislation,” a senior administration official said in an emailed statement. “The President has long called on Congress to pass cybersecurity information sharing legislation that will help the private sector and government share more cyber threat information by providing for targeted liability protections while carefully safeguarding privacy, confidentiality, and civil liberties.”

Except, you know, it doesn’t actually do that last part.

Filed Under: administration, cisa, cybersecurity, omnibus, omnibus bill, president obama, privacy, white house

Tech Companies Urge Lawmakers To Stop Trying To Kill Net Neutrality With Sneaky Budget Bill Riders

from the sneaky-bastards dept

Wed, Dec 16th 2015 02:08pm - Karl Bode

Since the FCC passed net neutrality rules last February, ISP allies in Congress have been working tirelessly to either gut the rules, or shame and defund the FCC so it can’t enforce them. This has included an endless number of House “fact-finding” hearings that usually involve using discredited ISP data to claim the rules are demolishing the Internet. Of course the opposite appears to be true; network investment (at least in competitive areas) continues undaunted, and the rules have actually helped stop a lot of the anti-competitive shenanigans that were occurring on the streaming video front.

In addition to a parade of pointless, taxpayer-funded hearings, telecom’s Congressional allies have spent months now trying to bury net neutrality rule-killing riders in an upcoming spending bill. The riders range in function from saddling the FCC with layers of often pointless new reporting requirements (out of a wink wink “love of transparency”), to prohibiting the FCC from enforcing the net neutrality rules until the telecom industry lawsuit is settled sometime next year.

And while all-too-many Silicon Valley companies and industry giants (**Google, cough**) remain mute and useless when it comes to publicly protecting net neutrality, a group of tech companies have written a letter to House and Senate leadership (pdf), urging them to keep their sneaky mouse print to themselves:

“We are writing to urge you to refrain from including riders relating to net neutrality and the Federal Communication Commission?s Open Internet Order in the upcoming omnibus spending legislation…Earlier this year, the House Appropriations Committee rushed to pass three net neutrality ?related riders, Sections 628?630. After the House?s action, several technology companies met with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle in the Senate to share how these riders are harmful to innovation and the thriving startup culture in the U.S.”

The companies, which range from Kickstarter and Tumblr to Level 3 and Etsy, proceed to urge Congress to handle their grievances with net neutrality in “a more thoughtful and pragmatic approach, rather than in the often chaotic appropriations process.” In other words, at least try to defeat net neutrality via the front door instead of sneaking around the back. The companies’ pressure appears to have helped, as an updated version of the $1.1 trillion ?omnibus? budget bill was tabled late in the week with all of the anti-neutrality language removed:

“After months of lobbying, Congress finally released its new budget proposal early Wednesday morning. The anti-net neutrality language does not appear in the 2009-page bill. A final vote is expected Friday, followed by President Obama?s signature…”This is a huge win,? Harold Feld, senior VP of DC-based advocacy group Public Knowledge, told Motherboard. ?But the fight is not yet over until this is passed and signed.?

A total dismantling of net neutrality protections remains entirely possible; the most likely route to “victory” for net neutrality opponents is either by winning the industry lawsuit against the FCC, or by winning the 2016 elections and appointing a new FCC boss who’ll immediately get to work gutting the rules.

Filed Under: congress, funding, net neutrality, omnibus, omnibus bill
Companies: etsy, kickstarter, tumblr