Call your Senator today and stop the Cyber Security Act of 2012: it legalizes spying on your email, chats, photos, social behavior, and location for any purpose

Tiffiny from champion SOPA-fighters Fight for the Future says:

This year, grassroots movements defeated SOPA in the US and ACTA in Europe. We might be able to make another bad-idea bill, CISPA, go down in flames too (or get the privacy protections we've been fighting for). CISPA-- which already passed the House -- would give government access to all your personal data with no restrictions on what they could do with it. The Senate version of CISPA, which is slightly better but could be made much, much worse is going to final vote today.

If you have a secret --

Or think it's creepy that the government listens in on your cell phone calls, knows your location right now, reads your emails, all without a warrant? A bill going to vote today in Congress would make all of this government spying legal.

Millions of us aren't aware of this bill or don't realize how far they go.

That's why we're sharing this link: doyouhaveasecret.org

We took some time to try to capture exactly what's so dangerous and disturbing about having secrets at all.

This year, grassroots movements defeated SOPA in the US and ACTA in Europe. We might be able to make another bad-idea bill go down in flames too (or get the privacy protections we've been fighting for).

This could be the year for internet freedom and the open internet to prevail above huge amounts of lobbying dollars. And racking up wins on SOPA, CISPA, ACTA -- that'd be unprecedented. Millions of people could help make that happen.

Do you have a secret? (Thanks, Tiffiniy)

• [Cyran0]

  How far is this going to have to go before they’ll finally understand that the American people are as mad as hell about these infringements upon our rights, and we’re not  going to take it anymore?

  • [SoItBegins]

    Assume they understand. What makes you think the pattern’ll stop?

  • [fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

    Mad as hell and threatening to not take it anymore? We’d better keep an eye on you…

    • [Cyran0]

      Yes, wouldn’t you just hate to miss the show? ;P

      Let’s see, we have a theme, a character (and, oh, what a character indeed!), language and spectacle.

      All that’s missing is music and a plot!

  • [Jeff Couturier]

    That’s the thing – we Americans are _not_ mad as hell. Most of us don’t care about this at all and pay much more attention to which celebrity troglodyte is pregnant this week.

    I wish this weren’t the case, but for the most part we just don’t care.

• [Recluse]

  I was shocked to see today’s NY Times Editorial come out in staunch support of this bill evoking all the usual bogeymen and not even mentioning the privacy issues.

  Well, what are a few babies as long as we get rid of that dirty bathwater….

  Oh… pardon me.. THEY DID address the privacy issues:

  “And civil liberties groups say their earlier privacy concerns have been addressed.”

  Which groups might this be?

  • [Cyran0]

     ”Which groups might this be?”

    That’s on a need-to-know basis.

• [Jeff Couturier]

  As much as I like doyouhaveasecret.org I think it’s framing the issue incorrectly and possibly doing harm to the cause.

  It doesn’t matter whether or not we have secrets. This is not about secrets, it’s about PRIVACY. Those two terms have different meanings and implications. It doesn’t matter whether or not a person has anything to hide – a secret. It only matters if the government thinks you have something to hide, or thinks you’re up to no good. Implying that those with big secrets are the only people that need to be concerned about privacy is very wrong.

  Those of us that are strong privacy advocates understand this. The general public, who this campaign is aimed at and trying to get on board, usually do not. This isn’t about secrets. It’s about our right to privacy.

  • [EvilTerran]

    They say nothing about “big” secrets in particular — I read it as being just as much about the little secrets as the big ones.

    The way you trash-talk your boss to your family; that running joke you and your buddy have about bombing a government building; the pot you smoke to take the edge off that old sports injury; the atheism you hide from your bible-bashing family…

• [Stuart Wallace]

  If it were to pass, It would be in conflict with the 1st Amendment and stricken down by the Supreme Court.

  • [Jeff Couturier]

    There are several laws on the books that seem to conflict with the First Amendment but are codified law regardless. It’s not a given that CISPA would be struck down. In order for that to happen, a suit would have to be brought to court challenging the legality of CISPA, and that case would have to make it all the way up to the Supreme Court. There is no guarantee that would happen.

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    The Supreme Court is a group of people with political agendas which affect their interpretations of the Constitution.

• [Major Zonk]

  I like to Mail myself a copy of the  Constitution in the hopes the Government will Open it up and actually Read it.

• [decius]

  Could we maybe have less blood splatter and creepy music and more intelligent analysis of the legislation? Sure there are plenty of people who have drunk the koolaid and will call their senator whenever online civil liberties groups tell them too, but if they aren’t capable of deciding for themselves what to think, how meaningful is their support really?

  This legislation is significantly more narrow than it was when it was called CISPA. After digging around I found out what the Franken-Paul amendment does. It strikes text that more or less says its legal for private companies to use intrusion prevention systems to protect their computer networks from attack. People already do that.

  A letter from the CDT arguing in favor of this amendment states that no justification for it has been offered. Do you really have no idea why this is on the table?!

  You’re holding up a conspiracy theory about potential government surveillance to prevent people from taking action against actual real world spying. I’m sure that if we strip away all the hyperbole there is some legitimate concern and with it perhaps a way to reach a workable compromise but its hard to see it through the all FUD.

  • [Argento Dei]

     And maybe if my father didn’t beat me, I wouldn’t flinch when he raised his hand at me.  Legislation brokered in secret and rushed out for a vote rarely gets a reflexive benefit of a doubt from me just as my father doesn’t have the right to look wounded and say “I was just trying to straighten your hair” after a history of slapping.