Both Republicans and Democrats have been guilty of being tone deaf when it comes to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). SOPA promised to close loopholes in online piracy laws but threatened to create a plutocratic censorship system that will nullify not only the entire social media landscape but the free exchange of information we have all come to cherish online. But SOPA was dropped as a result of enormous democratic pressure from citizens and businesses voicing their displeasure with elected officials. As word of Friday’s massive DDoS attack slowly spread, news sites like CNN decided to have Tennessee’s Republican congresswoman Marsha Blackburn, who sits on the House Subcommittee on Communications and Technology, to talk about the attack. Rep. Blackburn thought the best way to fight this kind of attack would have been to pass SOPA.
Wolf, you don’t know who is behind this, you don’t know if it’s foreign or domestic. What I do know is over the years we have tried to pass data security legislation. There’s been bipartisan agreement in the House. It has not moved forward into the Senate. We also know that a few years ago we tried to do a bill called SOPA in the House which required the ISPs to do some governance on these networks and to block some of the bad actors. And of course, there were all of the cyberbots that took out after us that were trying to say ‘no you can’t do that you’re going to impede our free speech. We said ‘no we’re trying to keep the roadway clear and to keep some of these bad actors out of the system.
She just called the millions of people who took to the internet to voice their displeasure with elected officials “cyberbots.” Also, ISPs to do “governance” and “block these bad actors” is not security. When you listen to Rep. Blackburn talk, you realize that what she thinks and wants is to be allowed to screen everyone’s emails in order to stop malware from spreading around the Internet of Things. So grab a glass of whatever it is you “cyberbots” drink (oil? ones and zeros?) and watch an elected official talk about technology.