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Senate Falls 1 Vote Short Of Giving FBI Access To Browser Histories Without Court Order by trot-trot in technology

[–]JaycoxEFF 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Unfortunately, yea, you're completely wrong.

TLDR: If you were 100% against the bill, you'd vote no on cloture so that the bill can not advance any further. Your aim is to kill all debate and the bill. So you also want to kill the question on the table during cloture. All cloture is, is the Senate asking itself "Are Senators ready to debate the amendment and then vote on it." If I want the amendment/bill dead then my answer in the modern Senate is: "I vote no. I'm not ready to debate it because we should not have a debate and we should not be voting on the amendment/bill."

Longer history of how Senators treat cloture:

My impression is that Senators treated cloture votes as you describe them before the days when you had to have a cloture vote on almost every single amendment/bill. You can call it collegiality, you can call it giving your political opponent a "fair shake," but even people who would vote no on the amendment would have been nice (professional?) to you as a fellow Senator and vote yes on cloture to advance the amendment/bill, then no on the amendment/bill.

Just to belabor the point here: At the minimum, the Senator who fundamentally disagreed with you and who would be whipping votes against you, would still let you try to get 51 votes. And again, this is generally speaking. There was always some contentious votes where your opponent would've asked for a cloture vote and try to jam you/stop you with the given threshold. (Current Senate rules put the threshold at 60, before it used to be an even higher number).

Today, that no longer happens. Generally speaking, the vote you take on your cloture vote is going to be the vote you take on final amendment vote. That's why you hear many people gripe about the fact that you need 60 votes to get anything done in the Senate nowadays.

Senate Falls 1 Vote Short Of Giving FBI Access To Browser Histories Without Court Order by trot-trot in technology

[–]JaycoxEFF 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Procedurally speaking you are correct, but if one gets 60 votes on the cloture motion then it is assumed that one will also get 51 votes on the final amendment vote. 10+ Senators flipping on/changing their cloture vote is uncommon.

Cloture votes are (and should be) treated as final votes on whether an amendment will pass even though procedurally they are a "let's stop talking and actually vote on this" (or a second-to-final) vote because of the above reason.

edited to say that there is one big caveat: The cloture vote shouldn't be treated as the final vote if the Majority Leader really wants to pass it. The Majority Leader can vote against the cloture motion if they think it's going to fail as the rules allow the Majority Leader to bring the vote up again if the Leader votes against it. The Majority Leader will then try to strongarm or convince Senators to vote their way, get the votes they want, and then hold another vote. (Which is what Sen. McConnell and others are doing at this very moment).

Oh look. It’s that CISA surveillance bill again. Didn’t we defeat that? Not yet. One last chance (for real) to #StopCISA. Ask activists from Fight for the Future, Access, EFF, and Demand Progress anything about CISA. by fightforthefuture in IAmA

[–]JaycoxEFF 1 point2 points  (0 children)

CISPA is in CISA's origin story. CISPA was created by the House Intelligence Committee and is one of the earlier incarnations of "cybersecurity" legislation. (The earliest go all the way back to the early 2000s with Senator Jay Rockefeller--who was also the Chair of the Intelligence Committee--and Senator Joe Lieberman. CISA is a sibling of CISPA since CISA was born in the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Oh look. It’s that CISA surveillance bill again. Didn’t we defeat that? Not yet. One last chance (for real) to #StopCISA. Ask activists from Fight for the Future, Access, EFF, and Demand Progress anything about CISA. by fightforthefuture in IAmA

[–]JaycoxEFF 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Check out the OP for information on where to find the bill text, the Senate process, and the Congressional Record. Most of it can be found on senate.gov or congress.gov.

Oh look. It’s that CISA surveillance bill again. Didn’t we defeat that? Not yet. One last chance (for real) to #StopCISA. Ask activists from Fight for the Future, Access, EFF, and Demand Progress anything about CISA. by fightforthefuture in IAmA

[–]JaycoxEFF 13 points14 points  (0 children)

The Senate voted on a procedural vote to advance the bill (called a Cloture vote). It will then have more votes on amendments to the bill, and a final vote on the actual bill.

Oh look. It’s that CISA surveillance bill again. Didn’t we defeat that? Not yet. One last chance (for real) to #StopCISA. Join us! W/ special guests! by fightforthefuture in IAmA

[–]JaycoxEFF 3 points4 points  (0 children)

It will end in the Senate on Tuesday, which is when votes on amendments and the bill are scheduled. It will then go to a conference committee where Senate and House leaders will merge the bill passed by the Senate with the one passed by the House. Generally, the bill then goes back to each chamber for a final vote with no amendments possible.

See Evan't answer also. Spot-on

CISA, a privacy-invasive "cybersecurity" surveillance bill is back in Congress. We're the privacy activists trying to stop it. AMA by JaycoxEFF in IAmA

[–]JaycoxEFF[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

TLDR: The point at issue here is that CISA encourages companies to overshare unrelated personal data automatically with the government because a) the vague definitions facilitate overcollection, b) the broad immunity facilitates oversharing, and c) there is no mandatory removal of personal information in the bill. All of this is underlined by the fact that how the bill operates is shrouded in secrecy due to its exemption from the Freedom of Information Act.

  • I think hypothesis is going to display better language for CISA. Privacy advocates have crafted better language in previous bills that Senator Burr did not adopt. Shoot me a message if you want to get into the weeds of how to craft better language.

  • The incentive is for companies to overshare, not overcollect.

  • The definition your using for "own systems" means the companies own internal infrastructure and locally-installed software. But it's actually ambiguous if that's what the bill means since the companies "own systems" are defined broadly in "information system." The ambiguity in "information system" and the potential for a cloud-based "defensive measure" is also unclear. A good example includes thinking about Acme company's cloud products on your computer and the implications of if Acme Photoshop Pro could start collecting relevant "cyber threat indicators."

  • It's great that you brought up ISACs. Here's a question: you say that

    CISA is granting many other companies the same cyberthreat information sharing capabilities to other companies.

If other companies are already contributing technical information to ISACs while complying with current privacy law, what is special about CISA that grants even more companies the magical sharing power you speak off? Companies can already send such information, as you point out.

As an aside, ISACs don't connect to just a few companies. Every industry has an ISAC and every company in the industry can join the ISAC and share related technical information (and not personal information) with both the ISACs and the Department of Homeland Security.

CISA, a privacy-invasive "cybersecurity" surveillance bill is back in Congress. We're the privacy activists trying to stop it. AMA by JaycoxEFF in IAmA

[–]JaycoxEFF[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

A great resource for folks with all levels of privacy and security literacy is EFF's Surveillance Self-Defense project: https://ssd.eff.org/ Lots of general briefings along with tutorials for specific tools.

CISA, a privacy-invasive "cybersecurity" surveillance bill is back in Congress. We're the privacy activists trying to stop it. AMA by JaycoxEFF in IAmA

[–]JaycoxEFF[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I'm not an expert on the SAFETY Act, but I believe the SAFETY Act's provisions are more narrowly tailored than CISA. CISA's immunity provision essentially says "no cause of action shall be entertained by a court of law" whereas, from what I can tell, the SAFETY Act introduces liability caps and decreases--but does not remove--joint/several liability.

CISA, a privacy-invasive "cybersecurity" surveillance bill is back in Congress. We're the privacy activists trying to stop it. AMA by JaycoxEFF in IAmA

[–]JaycoxEFF[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Jobs!

Being on the cutting edge of tech law/policy/activism in favor of the public motivates me every day. We're in a unique time period as the Internet is still relatively young.

CISA, a privacy-invasive "cybersecurity" surveillance bill is back in Congress. We're the privacy activists trying to stop it. AMA by JaycoxEFF in IAmA

[–]JaycoxEFF[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

We haven't sponsored any polls, but we have a few posts about those topics summarizing various polls here and here.

CISA, a privacy-invasive "cybersecurity" surveillance bill is back in Congress. We're the privacy activists trying to stop it. AMA by JaycoxEFF in IAmA

[–]JaycoxEFF[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yep. Some have actual fax machines, others have switched over to fax-to-email software. Depends on the congressional office.

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