Remember, tptacek has very little idea what he is talking about when he posts this same comment on every thread. Doesn't have a clue about the politics; doesn't have a clue about the law. To be charitable. Because he has been informed, and keeps posting this, which turns it from clueless to intentionally lying.
Yes, under ECPA, information can be disclosed "as may be necessarily incident to the rendition of the service", which is to say, not very often, since it's not often necessarily incident, and a company which disclosed your information might have to prove in a court of law that it was necessarily incident. Which is a rather big limitation, as opposed to tptacek's lying characterization of it as "without limitation".
I don't really understand tptacek's position here - is he being paid for this? - but this repeated bullshit posting needs to stop. (And the evil-Democrat-vs.-noble-Republican stuff is pure fantasyland. CISPA isn't about cybersecurity as computer professionals think of it. It's about copyright enforcement and general government snooping, not about hacking. Both Democrats and Republicans are fully behind it, despite the political wrangling, assuming that the copyright lobby has made the proper campaign contributions this year.)
Is there a way to make your point without the ad-hominem or the accusations, and with more references? You've accused him of deliberately and repeatedly lying (a pretty serious accusation for one of the top HN contributors); do you have any evidence besides your differing interpretation of his citation?
(And I still do not see how it is at all related to copyright.)
not commenting about the other issues, but CISPA grants legal immunity if
"theft or misappropriation of private or government information, intellectual property, or personally identifiable information." (exact quote from the text of the bill)
is thought to be occurring, and information is shared, it is very much related to copyright.
It is likely you are working from the first draft of the bill without its amendments. In particular, later amendments narrow "cyber threats" to:
‘(3) CYBER THREAT INFORMATION.—
‘‘(A) IN GENERAL.—The term ‘cyber
threat information’ means information directly
pertaining to—
‘‘(i) a vulnerability of a system or net-
work of a government or private entity;
‘‘(ii) a threat to the integrity, con-
fidentiality, or availability of a system or
network of a government or private entity
or any information stored on, processed on,
or transiting such a system or network;
‘‘(iii) efforts to degrade, disrupt, or
destroy a system or network of a govern-
ment or private entity; or
‘‘(iv) efforts to gain unauthorized ac-
cess to a system or network of a govern-
ment or private entity, including to gain
such unauthorized access for the purpose
of exfiltrating information stored on, proc-
essed on, or transiting a system or network
of a government or private entity
I'm not seeing BitTorrent in there.
(By the way, I don't think you deserve the downvotes for bringing this up. I found the amendments aggravating to track down, too. I'd been working from an earlier draft of CISPA that struck "intellectual property", which turned out not to be the one the House voted on.)
‘(B) EXCLUSION.— Such term does not
include information pertaining to efforts to gain
unauthorized access to a system or network of
a government or private entity that solely in-
volve violations of consumer terms of service or
consumer licensing agreements and do not oth-
erwise constitute unauthorized access.
I've seen many posts from tptacek and he often comes across as a shill repeatedly warning people about Democratic intentions.
He makes the usual partisan comments about Democrats but without going into specific detail, and usually follows up with something along the lines of saying he's a Democrat or donates to them. And I usually he presents the non-argument that much of what is in this bill was already lawful.
"you probably should be careful about cheering CISPA's demise."
I really don't trust anyone who takes the fear defense of a piece of legislation that seems to have more flaws than benefits, along with 'already lawful' measures.
If he were simply saying don't trust Republicans or Democrats, I don't think most people would disagree. I wouldn't.
Edit: I think the point that all he says is "be warned about Democrats they support this" without any examples or citations repeatedly is an important point, as it's lacking substance and comes across as spammy by HN standards.
Yes, under ECPA, information can be disclosed "as may be necessarily incident to the rendition of the service", which is to say, not very often, since it's not often necessarily incident, and a company which disclosed your information might have to prove in a court of law that it was necessarily incident. Which is a rather big limitation, as opposed to tptacek's lying characterization of it as "without limitation".
I don't really understand tptacek's position here - is he being paid for this? - but this repeated bullshit posting needs to stop. (And the evil-Democrat-vs.-noble-Republican stuff is pure fantasyland. CISPA isn't about cybersecurity as computer professionals think of it. It's about copyright enforcement and general government snooping, not about hacking. Both Democrats and Republicans are fully behind it, despite the political wrangling, assuming that the copyright lobby has made the proper campaign contributions this year.)