Vote to Discontinue chilling gov't actions on civilian Internet activities and journalism

[clear eye]

8 minutes before the deadline to submit a proposal to the Open Gov't Brainstorm, I decided to put one in. I finished two minutes before the deadline. My proposal is in the Transparency section under the subheading "Making Government Operations More Open". You can vote for it here.

The short entry in full:

Discontinue chilling gov't actions on civilian Internet activities and journalism
by restoring FISA protections that require warrants before surveilling communications between U.S. citizens. The "Cybersecurity Czar" Pres. Obama appointed resigned in protest because he claimed the NSA was refusing to pass on his recommendations for protecting the privacy of citizens using the Internet, and was creating a situation that threatened to treat all Internet communications, including communications with journalists as open to surveillance w/o distinction.

Why Is This Idea Important?
This interferes w/ important whistleblower activities and revelations of gov't malfeasance to the general public. Whistleblowers who need to remain anonymous because they have a legitimate fear of retaliation, will be stymied. The whole purpose of transparency is to promote accountability. Gov't spying discourages revelations that may be important for that accountability.

For the discerning DU readership, here is substantiating background info:

"Congress votes to immunize lawbreaking telecoms, legalize warrantless eavesdropping", Jul 9 2008 by Glenn Greenwald in Salon.com
"National Cybersecurity Center director resigns", Mar 9 2009 by Steve Ragan in The Tech Herald

Excerpted from the Ragan article:

In his letter {Cybersecurity Chief Beckstrom} singled out the NSA, and the way they effectively control the DHS’s efforts through detailees, technology insertions, and to top it all off, “the proposed move of the NPPD and the NCSC to a Fort Meade NSA facility.”

“While acknowledging the critical importance of NSA to our intelligence efforts, I believe this is a bad strategy on multiple grounds,” Beckstrom wrote. “The intelligence culture is very different than a network operations or security structure. In addition, the threats to our democratic processes are significant if all top-level government network security and monitoring are handled by any one organization (either directly or indirectly).”

I admit I didn't do the subject justice in my 6 minute composition, but I believe the subject of the decimated FISA protections, especially the chilling effects on oversight of gov't by journalists, is important enough to be revisited. If you do as well, I encourage you to vote for my proposal.

[Wednesdays]

1. K&R

:kick:

[clear eye]

2. Thanks.

.....;-)