https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3qban2/oh_look_its_th...
Looks like it just started a few minutes ago, so no idea if it'll be useful, or not.
I've been uniformly discouraged by FFTF's advocacy, which I find goes way past "misleading" into "straight up dishonest", such as their recent piece that strongly suggested Facebook supported CISA (a fact not in evidence, for whatever that's worth) because doing so would immunize them from privacy suits for user data so long as they dumped all that user data to the USG. No reading of CISA gets you to that.
Example from today's AMA is FFTF's claim that CISA "exempts itself from FOIA", making it impossible to challenge in court: they're referring to Sec 4 (d) (4) (b), which exempts from FOIA individual shared indicators, which of course must be the case, because indicators are things like compromised account names and passwords. That's all the law exempts from disclosure.
Also 5 (d) (3) (a) and (b) which exempts "Cyber threat indicators and defensive measures provided to the Federal Government under this Act".
I don't know if CISA also prevents Privacy Act requests, or if it only applies to FOIA.
Theoretically, companies using CISA would anonymize personally identifiable information before sharing to the government. An IP address, for example, is probably not PII (as millions of people have pointed out in the context of digital piracy lawsuits). I doubt one could file a Privacy Act request just based on an IP address.
how could it be otherwise?
Allow FOIA, and use the existing exemptions for classified material if the information is actually classified. This would mean that breaches of privacy could be found when non-classified information is present.
There seems to be concentration on "indicators" being username/passwords, etc. However, Sec 2 (6) (G) is "any other attribute of a cybersecurity threat, if disclosure of such attribute is not otherwise prohibited by law;". That's basically anything since cybersecurity threat is defined as "means _an action_ ... on or through an information system that _may_ result in an unauthorized effort ...". That seems to be a rather large hole.
So there'd need to be some other regime in place that ensures that no harm is done by publishing information that companies are voluntarily sharing with the USG.
What would that regime look like?
I'm also not really convinced that there's a problem with the catch-all at the end of Sec.2(6) --- that's enabling companies to share things they were already allowed to share, and just bringing it under the same set of controls as the new sensitive stuff they can share. How is that a loophole the USG can exploit? What does that loophole look like in practice, in actual use?
Advocacy organizations are not journalists. They don't need to cite their sourcing before making claims they believe are true. The purpose of calling out Facebook is an attempt force them to align their public and private positions if they differ.
As usual, Marcy does excellent analysis about what information NSA will be able to collect, analyze and disseminate under CISA.[1]
[1] https://www.emptywheel.net/2015/10/26/two-intended-consequen...
1. That Chrysler can exploit CISA to avoid liability for vulnerabilities in their cars simply by sharing the flaws with the USG as an "indicator".
2. That the USG can use CISA to collude with private companies to avoid warrant requirements and spy on their customers.
Both of these points are, I think, false. I've linked upthread to the text of the bill and provided a summary. In particular, I don't think the "Chrysler reading" of the bill finds any support at all in the text; Chrysler is immunized from suits stemming from their own sharing, and even in the sharing, they are explicitly on the hook for negligence and misconduct.
If it's helpful, here's the entire limitation of liability in CISA. Notice: companies are exempt from liability for monitoring, sharing, and receipt of indicators. They aren't exempt from liability for having vulnerabilities in the first place!
6.Protection from liability
(a) Monitoring of information systems
No cause of action shall lie or be maintained in any court against
any private entity, and such action shall be promptly dismissed,
for the monitoring of information systems and information under
section 4(a) that is conducted in accordance with this Act.
(b) Sharing or receipt of cyber threat
indicators
No cause of action shall lie or be maintained in any court against
any entity, and such action shall be promptly dismissed, for the
sharing or receipt of cyber threat indicators or defensive
measures under section 4(c) if—
(1) such sharing or receipt is conducted in accordance with this
Act; and
(2) in a case in which a cyber threat indicator or defensive
measure is shared with the Federal Government, the cyber threat
indicator or defensive measure is shared in a manner that is
consistent with section 5(c)(1)(B) and the sharing or receipt, as
the case may be, occurs after the earlier of—
(A) the date on which the interim policies and procedures are
submitted to Congress under section 5(a)(1); or
(B) the date that is 60 days after the date of the enactment of
this Act.
(c) Construction
Nothing in this section shall be
construed—
(1)to require dismissal of a cause of action against an entity
that has engaged in gross negligence or willful misconduct in the
course of conducting activities authorized by this Act; or
(2)to undermine or limit the availability of otherwise applicable
common law or statutory defenses.It seems relatively simple to read this passage in the following way:
Let's say a major car company decided to leave open a port with a remote code execution vulnerability on their cars.
Let's say this car company discovered this port was being exploited and informs the NSA of affected vehicles IMEI numbers, IP addresses etc.
Now let's say FTC/NTSB wanted to put together a case for punishing the car manufacturer for their poor security operations.
It seems perfectly reasonable for a lawyer to read the passage from CISA and claim the court couldn't use any disclosure to the government under like the number of affected vehicles(easily calculated from the threat information previously shared) in any determination of liability.
If there's an authority under which Chrysler can be prosecuted for having vulnerabilities (spoiler: I don't believe there is), CISA doesn't change any of that. Certainly, there's no clear linkage between CISA sharing and a private actor's ability to sue Chrysler for torts emerging from vulnerabilities.
I don't even think there's a stretch reading of the statute that gets you where this blog post lands.
Marcy compares the CISA liability protections to the very similar Section 314(b) of the Patriot Act financial information sharing liability safe harbor.
It seems at least plausible that they will operate in a similar fashion if CISA becomes law.
https://www.emptywheel.net/2015/10/14/time-to-get-very-conce...
The lengths taken to interpret "torture" for instance. It used to be that we have a fairly logical, common sense interpretation of things but I think those days are gone. I mean, unlimited data should really mean unlimited data not subject to some arbritary cap or throttling .
I expect I will disagree with you about the desirability of CISA, just as we disagreed years ago about CISPA, but enjoy your posts on the topic nevertheless. They make thoughtful and reasonable points. Even if you end up on the wrong side. :)
Tell me where you find these journalists today.
So in other words, as long as they are "advocacy organizations" and say that they believe in some view, they get a free pass to lie, spread bullshit and FUD? I thought we should have a higher standard.
Personally, I am for severely punishing liars as a top priority, no matter what side they're on. Then we may get a constructive discussion.
I'm really not sure what's so complicated about this.
I have a hard time thinking of legal support EFF has provided that I don't support. If EFF was just legal support, I'd be a donor.
I think their technical work is mostly good; it would be entirely good but for the egregiously terrible Secure Messaging Scorecard --- but hey, that scorecard won me a $1000 bet against Matt Green, so some good came out of it.
Virtually all of EFF's policy advocacy, I find untrustworthy. I don't even believe they take it seriously. I think they play to the crowds, in the hope that the retweets and upvotes will generate more donations.
Is it really that hard for you to see that as a plausible narrative? I'm not asking you to agree with it.
This is an interesting conspiracy theory.
> Is it really that hard for you to see that as a plausible narrative?
My theory is that they really believe in what they're doing. They are based in SF, so they are surrounded by well-funded startups offering high salaries. Employees of EFF could be making small fortunes, and instead they choose to fight to secure civil rights. Why? Because some people value freedom over currency. This narrative seems more plausible.
I'm sure they're all good people who believe in what they're doing. It does not follow that they believe in every individual position they advocate for; they're a nonprofit, so fundraising is a huge part of their job.
Nope. The bill clearly defines "cyber threat indicators" to include the entire content of whatever these companies disclose to the government. The things that make up "cyber threat indicators" go on for an entire page, and it's an "or" list rather than an "and" list. For Facebook, it would probably be something like a particular Facebook post that tripped their "threat" trigger, plus all the info that Facebook has about that user account (maybe every post that account ever made), including IP addresses that posted to that account and everything else.
And yes, every single thing "shared" with the government (I'm reminded of "the sharing economy" with this usage) is entirely exempt from FOIA disclosure, as the CISA bill clearly says. And of course no cause of action shall lie in any court, so there's no help there either. So no, there will never be any way to review the scope or magnitude of this "sharing", apart from whatever information (truthful or not) the government deigns to share.
Your description of CISA is the one that is straight up dishonest.
I even took the time, elsewhere on the thread, to summarize all the different classes of data that CISA deems "indicators":
American: Home of the safe and the surveilled.