CISPA

So CISPA is the new bizarre law that lawmakers want to have passed to allow the government to turn all big brothery to do more warrantless wiretaps on people 'just in case' for not just to counter cyberterrorism but a bunch of other reasons too.

Some people are fighting to limit the "other reasons too" part.
The House passed it with a strong majority. The Senate is going to put it off til some point next month (which means in a week or so). The President had already threatened to veto it but the House members who were for it are gloating that it passed in the House and are making fun of people in the White House for disliking it.

I really hope they don't use it as an excuse to go after everybody who ever did anything questionable or gray on the Internet because that happens to be basically most of the people on the Internet.

It would help if our politicians would set a concrete and limiting definition of terrorism as "political violence in the form of crimes committed against the state" but nobody will, and they like using it as a sort of an umbrella to also categorize a bunch of other crimes, dodgy behaviors, etc. which are not politically motivated violence and/or do not involve crimes committed against the State. Also, what makes CISPA bothersome is that whole set of "and other reasons too" that are allowed. If it's for security and to combat terrorism then technically it should not be also touted as a solution to the war on online piracy, since links between the two are tenuous at best. But hey, I'm not Washington DC. I don't think like them. I'm not allowed to make laws. I am allowed under the First Amendment (still, so far) to comment and critique them though so long as this does not encourage breaking of the laws or doing other illegal activities. Until such a point as criticizing a law becomes a crime. At this point it would be safe to go: "Okay, I guess we aren't a democracy/republic anymore." I mean it wouldn't in that scenario because that would be something bad to say too, but to evaluate it as being so, would not be horribly inaccurate.

The talking heads are attempting to say that all hackers are terrorists. I think if you are trying to sabotage government computers and equipment that would count as trying to harm the State but somebody being a hacker or not doesn't mean they necessarily will or do that. Only some do. And those ones do get punished. I forget what the sentence/terms usually are but, don't they have to go to jail, and aren't allowed to use the internet or computers or cellphones for a really really long time, or something to that effect? I mean yeah, when people use technology to commit crimes, that does count as cybercrime but I think in our overzeal we may go after too many little bad things we dislike people doing and neglect to go after enough of the big scary things. I mean, it's just way too convenient to use appeals that it will go after the big bad stuff to justify going after all the little stuff. Who am I to say though. If you attack machines belonging to a business, they can sue you and you can have a very nasty fine and/or some jailtime on your hands too. That's how it already was before. So if messing with computers and equipment that belong to the government or businesses are both already considered crimes with punishments, then why CISPA?