Ever since the mass DDoS attacks yesterday that took down "the Internet," I've been trying to keep track of all the blatantly incorrect, misleading, fear mongering statements that members of Congress and other officials have made. (Disclosure: I work for [a nonprofit](fightforthefuture.org) that fights bad Internet legislation like CISA.)
It's been tough to choose, but there's one that stands out as the most ridiculous:
Tennessee's Representative Marsha Blackburn went on CNN shortly after the attacks and implied that the Internet outage could have been prevented by a bill called SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, which you may remember because it was resoundingly rejected after mass protests as TERRIBLE idea that would have lead to widespread internet censorship. It also had absolutely nothing to do with preventing cyber attacks. Even its proponents would agree that it was about copyright enforcement, not digital security. It certainly did nothing to hold companies accountable for improving the security of consumer technology products, which is what actually would prevent attacks like this.
Blackburn went on to blame free speech advocates for having stopped SOPA, and even went so far as to call us ... wait for it ... CYBERBOTS!!!
Do you care about free speech? If so, you're a cyberbot too. Cyberbots unite! Let's remember that many politicians barely understand how the Internet works. We can't let them exploit these recent attacks to push for bad legislation. More here.
by evanFFTF http://ift.tt/2eTuPY3
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