I was unable to blackout this website today for the CISPA Blackout due to a long, annoying-on-many-levels story involving *someone else* getting massively hacked. So I thought I’d do something to raise awareness and make a point. I think that the women in these galleries would agree with my feelings about CISPA for the following reasons:
* The women in these galleries have given clear, legal consent for their images to be shared. CISPA permits sharing of your data between companies (Apple, Amazon, Facebook, etc.) without your consent.
* The women in these images know what viewers are doing – hopefully enjoyably – when they look at, and think about, the images and women in them. There are hundreds of Federal agencies that can easily obtain your data under CISPA and companies have stated they cannot protect your data under the Act. It is unclear exactly what will be done with your data. At least the porn models know what you’re doing with their pictures.
* The women in these images have signed contracts with the companies holding license to distribute the images and have legal standing to hold the companies accountable if the companies misbehave or act negligently with the images. CISPA grants companies immunity to share your data and information without your knowledge or consent.
* The women in these images want the images to be shared in the manner which they were initially agreed upon at the time of the shoot. CISPA facilitates unmonitored sharing and changes the data protection, privacy and data sharing Terms you agreed to when you signed up with, say, Google.
* The women in these images would be at risk in potentially serious ways if the data associated with them vis-a-vis their modeling work and their real-life online accounts was compiled into a dossier without their knowledge and passed around to Federal Government agencies without their knowledge and consent. Like porn, apparently Federal Government agencies apparently will know a cyberthreat when they see it: the terms used in CISPA to obtain info on individuals is not defined. Much like the term “porn” is used to label “things I don’t like” (See: Apple, China, Morality in Media) it is likely that “cyberthreat” will be used the same way.
* The potential for the women in these images to be nonconsensually exploited (or worse) by U.S. Federal Government employees (from the TSA to Immigration, the FBI and more) behind closed doors is very real. Think about it. The TSA. All it takes is one bad person with this unchecked access to ruin a girl’s life.
The ACLU has pretty much the most badass rundown of what CISPA is in their CISPA Explainer series. Check out my article today explaining what you can do about it. This expose on Federal security practices is also worth reading.
You know how anonymity protects the lives and safety of at-risk individuals everywhere – journalists in Syria, female rights activists in Egypt, that gay or trans kid who might actually get killed after school, human rights activists in China, those who IWF (Internet While Female) or IWS (Internet While Sexy)… CISPA, and legislation like it, carves a huge hole out of the back of any safety net these people have.
This wouldn’t be so upsetting for me if the data the U.S. Government wasn’t just proven to be the worst at data security of any American industry.
