At this point, University of Oregon students are sick and tired of hearing about ASUO elections in light of the shit-slinging, back door tactics that have filled our Facebook news feeds and made the cover of the Oregon Daily Emerald (ODE) for the past week. But one big question still lingers, what the hell is going on with the voting process? If Kate and Alex have been removed from the ticket, how is it that as of 4/10/12 at 12:55pm I can still vote for them? Why hasn’t Ben and Lamar been added back onto the ballot? Rumor has it that general elections will be held week four, is this true? What does that even mean? The worst part about this massive grey area that it has tossed our elections procedure into a blender, and the only organization who seems to been attempting to drink and regurgitate this poisonings concoction is the organization who’s been slanting the election since day one, the ODE.

I have yet to see ANY clarification from the ASUO, ASUO elections board, or the University of Oregon Administration directed towards the general student body in regards to what the regular voting process was, and how it has changed due to recent events. I keep seeing quotes in the ODE calling for administrative clarity on the matter, but have yet to receive one email from administration giving me a non-slanted summary of what is going on with our ASUO elections.

Students already have a problem with turning out to the polls once every four years in Presidential elections, led alone every year for ASUO elections. My guess is that a decent demographic of UO students have been turned off completely due to the recent events surrounding the ASUO elections drama.  

You know what really grinds my gears? The fact that Congress STILL has no comprehension of what the Internet is, and more importantly what the Internet is not. Want proof? Over the course of 24 hours on Wednesday, January 18, 2012, 162 million people experienced the Wikipedia blackout landing page — an unprecedented, historic shuttering of the largest repository of free knowledge in the world. More than 8 million U.S. readers looked up their Congressional representatives through Wikipedia to protest the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the PROTECT IP Act (PIPA) — proposed U.S. legislation that, if passed, will harm the free and open Internet. After the embarrassing amount of flip-flopping that went on within 24 hours of the wikipedia blackout, I would have thought Congress would have learned their lesson…

Next up: The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA)

First off, it’s safe to assume that if the title of a piece of Internet legislation sounds like it’s trying to protect you from “pirates” or seeks to help “protect” your intellectual property or privacy online, it’s most likely out to do the exact opposite. Essentially this bill (HR 3532) is being depicted as the next SOPA but much worse. How could anything ever be worse than SOPA you ask? Well, CISPA has the support of major tech corporations including Facebook, Microsoft, AT&T and many others. 

So what can we do about it? Can CISPA simply be stopped dead in it’s tracks as SOPA was? Doubtful.

Here is what the online activism/petition site Avaaz.org is saying.

“Right now, the US Congress is sneaking in a new law that gives them big brother spy powers over the entire web — and they’re hoping the world won’t notice. We helped stop their Net attack last time, let’s do it again.

Over 100 Members of Congress are backing a bill (CISPA) that would give private companies and the US government the right to spy on any of us at any time for as long as they want without a warrant. This is the third time the US Congress has tried to attack our Internet freedom. But we helped beat SOPA, and PIPA — and now we can beat this new Big Brother law. 

Our global outcry has played a leading role in protecting the Internet from governments eager to monitor and control what we do online. Let’s stand together once again — and beat this law for good. Sign the petition then forward to everyone who uses the Internet!”

Sign their petition here: http://www.avaaz.org/en/stop_cispa/?slideshow

Also, here is a long list of companies that are supporting CISPA: http://intelligence.house.gov/bill/cyber-intelligence-sharing-and-protection-act-2011

One of the long term projects I am currently working on would force Congress to actually understand what effects the legislation that they are proposing would have on the average citizen. 

Check out 5 steps to reinstating the Office of Technology Assessment: http://www.iframing.org/projects/ota/

PLEASE contact me directly if you have ANY ideas for combating this legislation.