Spyware, data privacy bills reappear in House

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Get Congress out of the IT business

There must be some way to prevent Congress from taking precipitous action on this issue. As soon as an elected legislator gets wind of something that he can control by enacting a law, he pursues the matter with a zeal bordering on fanaticism, and it seems he never fails to find yet one more way to whittle away at the Bill of Rights. Their attitude is that the Bill of Rights is okay as long as it is not taken too seriously and as long as government doesn?t allow those rights to get in the way of government controls.

The erosion of the Bill of Rights would seem to be primary function of all three branches of the Federal Government. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales takes advantage of every opportunity to spread the gospel of Executive power and Executive privilege. Barring a Congress that would endow the President with ?Enabling Powers?, The Attorney General treats the Congress as an uneducated body of persons who need to be carefully instructed in the proper interpretation of the Constitution.

It is made abundantly clear to the Congress and the American people that those who disagree with the Executive branch, in its interpretation of the Constitution, must be subversive agents who try to use the Bill of Rights as disruptive annoyances. In the name of Homeland Security, the Executive branch insists that the President has the power to suspend the Bill of Rights during time of war.

When and where possible, the Congress is encouraged to enact laws, which when standing alone, ignore Constitutional considerations. Just one tiny little example: where the Constitution insists that ?Congress shall make no law respecting ...the right of the people peaceably to assemble?? Instead of outlawing public demonstrations, laws were passed whereby a permit must be obtained, but where such permit can be denied if the powers-that-be insist that the proposed demonstration might possibly become unruly or pose a threat to the peaceful order of the community.

The Supreme Court then upholds the law, which effectively eradicates that particular freedom, by legitimizing a National Security interest in prohibiting demonstrations.

If Congress is allowed to continue unabated, the Bill of Rights will unravel as a safeguard against tyranny. Congress has not gone about suspending the Bill of Rights with sweeping repeals or blatant laws superceding our established rights; they have assiduously and meticulously emasculated those rights by the enactment of contravening laws which appear on the surface to protect our safety and integrity as a bastion of freedom in a world where human rights are sneered at by wielders of power.

The article tells us that the bill introduced on Thursday would impose 31 pages of regulations on software to define what is and what is not permissible.

Among those to be considered is one that would impose many additional security requirements including data breach notifications on private companies (though not federal agencies). Read between the lines and you cannot escape seeing law after law designed as invasions of privacy, and the abrogation of search and seizure laws based on sworn affidavits of probable cause.

?Dingell and Barton also are behind the Prevention of Fraudulent Access to Phone Records Act, which targets pretexting of phone records--that is, fraudulent access to them--and would impose sweeping and expensive regulations on telephone companies. They could, for instance, share customer information with third parties, including business partners, only if a customer gave ?express prior authorization.??

How many of you have taken the time to read the so-called Privacy Policy established on most web sites? The pretext seems admirable enough ? they must first obtain a customer?s express prior authorization, etc. I assure you: they?ve already got it. Your authorization became part and parcel of the Terms and Conditions (to which you agreed when registering with any web site), into which are incorporated that firm?s ?Privacy Policy? ? which, in its turn, gives you stringent assertions that they will hold your personal and private information in the strictest confidence, inviolable, and almost as sacred as an oath sworn upon the crucified body of Christ. They would rather sacrifice their first born sons than divulge your personal and private information, unless, of course, you willing give them permission to do anything they damn well good and please with it to anyone or any party that asks for it. The Privacy Policy goes on to insist that they, themselves, don?t use such information, but they cannot be held responsible for what others do with it.

And guess what! That Privacy Policy is incredibly uniform across the Internet ? after all, it is based on a document drafted and approved by the United States government.

As is, rules and regulations pertaining to the Internet will become a patch-work quilt of unrelated and uncoordinated statutes. We need, somehow, to get Congress out of the IT business. We need to formulate a Continental Congress for the study of uniform necessities in the field of regulation and control. Such Congress must exclude current lawmakers and be left to its own designs to draft an independent code of laws and ethics, which should include an itemization of matters untouchable by law enforcement, designed to protect a man?s privacy ? making intrusion into his PC illegal and subject to criminal sanctions.

I just wish I knew where to start and how to get the ball rolling on this idea. Ideally, such a Congress would include persons from every country, and where possible a consensus of opinion arrived at that would be aloof from nationalistic controls.

Let?s hear ideas.

Posted by: bobinvegas@...   Posted on: 02/14/07 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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