Better late than never

So President Obama has finally come out in favor of equal civil rights for gays. About damn time, and kudos to him for having the courage to do so ahead of the election instead of waiting until it was “safe” to take a stand. He should have done so years ago, but still, credit where credit is due. This takes a fair amount of courage. He’s taking a genuine risk here by making gay marriage a campaign issue, because the right is looking for something they can use to build up a backlash, and this could be their best bet.

My advice to the Obama campaign: focus on the theme that it’s wrong to discriminate against people just because they fall in love differently than you do. The right is going to harp on the idea that he’s “changing the definition of marriage” and promoting immorality. He needs to undercut that and challenge the assumption that there’s only one “correct” way to fall in love, and that the government ought to deny equal rights to those who are different. Marriage, as an institution, belongs to everyone, and not just to those who fit the majority’s self-serving definition of what constitutes “normal.”

Kiss the Fourth Amendment good-bye

Wow, I thought the vote was supposed to be today, but it looks like CISPA has already been rushed through the House.

The measure, which some are calling the Son of SOPA, allows internet service providers to share information with the government, including the Department of Homeland Security and the National Security Agency, about cybersecurity threats it detects on the internet. An ISP is not required to shield any personally identifying data of its customers when it believes it has detected threats, which include attack signatures, malicious code, phishing sites or botnets. In short, the measure seeks to undo privacy laws that generally forbid ISPs from disclosing customer communications with anybody else unless with a court order.

Orwell was off by a few years, but he had the right general idea. Big Brother is going to be watching you. Purely in your own best interests of course.

Right.

CISPA facing amendments

The International Business Times is reporting some possible good news on the individual liberties front.

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act [CISPA] is the greatest potential threat to Internet freedom and privacy currently before the U.S. Congress, and many critics have been warning in recent weeks that it has the potential to do even more harm to Internet privacy than the Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect IP Act would have done.

As such, the House is reigning in the bill in order to address some of the privacy concerns that have been raised by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT), millions of petition-signers and other opponents around the globe.

We need to keep the pressure on, because there are a number of business and political interests that could make substantial profits if certain legal protections were stripped away from us. Attacks like SOPA and CISPA are going to continue, just like creationism. Our only hope is constant vigilance.

Pentagon-sponsored identity theft

USA Today is reporting a disturbing and blatantly illegal propaganda campaign apparently being conducted by Pentagon contractors.

A USA TODAY reporter and editor investigating Pentagon propaganda contractors have themselves been subjected to a propaganda campaign of sorts, waged on the Internet through a series of bogus websites.

Fake Twitter and Facebook accounts have been created in their names, along with a Wikipedia entry and dozens of message board postings and blog comments. Websites were registered in their names.

A Pentagon spokesman denied being aware of any such activities on the part of its contractors, but the sites mysteriously disappeared after the contractors were asked about them.