(Photo: EFF.org)

CISPA, the cyber-privacy bill facing opposition from open Internet advocates, passed the House of Representatives today with a vote of 287 for, 127 against and 18 abstaining. The bill will now move on to the Democrat-controlled Senate, where it may face a tougher fight. President Obama has also threatened to veto the bill in its current form.

If passed, CISPA would give the U.S. government the ability to obtain personal user data from Internet companies without a court-ordered warrant.

(Photo: DeviantArt)

This morning a petition on the White House's official petition portal, We the People, began circulating across the web that asked the government to consider assigning each state a Pokemon character to represent it. It received under 1,000 signatures, but delighted swaths of "'90s ubernerds" nostalgic for a time when trading Pokemon cards on the playground was the most emotionally-fraught adventure of the day.

But a few hours after news of the petition broke, the White House yanked it from We the People, claiming that it violated the site's Terms of Participation. We have to assume recognizing a state Pokemon is not exactly high up on the administration's lengthy list of priorities.

Though there are some worthwhile petitions on We the People, many Internet users have glommed on to the tool as an act of trolling. And who can blame them, really? Come up with some outrageous idea, spread it around via social networks, and bam--it can't be that hard to get 25,000 signatures on a jokey petition. And who says millennials are politically disengaged?

"Are kids getting stoned and signing petitions now?" wondered one Betabeat writer. "Yay for engagement but go find a light show."

To be fair, the White House hasn't exactly discouraged this sort of behavior. Last week, the administration released a hilarious response to a petition to build a Death Star which, while absolutely delightful, was probably not the best use of government time?

(Photo: Apocalypse.net)

Though NASA has already gone to great lengths to assure adults everywhere that rumors of the world's supposed impending demise are in fact false, the government has now turned its focus to precocious teens who have traded in anxiety about what to wear for class picture day for soul-crushing fear of the apocalypse.

On USA.gov, which is apparently "the U.S. government's official web portal," some enterprising government intern wrote a short blog post meant to assuage the worries of America's angst-ridden tweens. No comets or stray planets are coming to collide with our own, we promise!

NASA has received thousands of letters concerned about the end of the world. David Morrison, a planetary astronomer and senior scientist for NASA who answers questions from the public about astrobiology, says, “At least a once a week I get a message from a young person ― as young as 11 ― who says they are ill and/or contemplating suicide because of the coming doomsday.”

Young people, always remember that if you're feeling upset about doomsday rumors, Neil Degrasse Tyson has your back.

(h/t NYMag)

(Photo: Living Indefinitely)

The federal government spends money to fix the country's infrastructure, help senior citizens get affordable access to health care and beef up national security, but did you know that it also pays for stuff like workshops on Star Trek musings?

The Washington Times reports that Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn has brought to light some of the Pentagon's non-security focused spending, which--as a small-government Republican--he naturally wants cut. Buried among the list of things the Pentagon supposedly spent money on, including a new form of rolled-up beef jerky, is this little gem:

$100,000 for a 2011 workshop on interstellar space travel that included a session entitled "Did Jesus die for Klingons too?" The session probed how Christian theology would apply in the event of the discovery of aliens.

We're unsure how a workshop focusing on the hypothetical mixture of Star Trek and Christian doctrine cost $100,000, unless they actually hosted it in space, but perhaps that new rolled-up beef jerky is expensive to cater.

This isn't the first time Klingons and Jesus have been thrown into the same mix. There's actually a website called Klingons for Jesus, which satirically claims, "Jesus is the messiah the Klingons have been waiting for all along."

Sadly, it appears the $100,000 question was never actually answered.

It's not a done deal that the government and Google will end up arguing the case in court, but a memo currently being prepared by the FTC is a big step in that direction:

The F.T.C. staff memo does not mean that the government will sue Google for antitrust violations. Next, the vote of three of the five F.T.C. commissioners would be required. And each step is a further prod for Google to make concessions to reach a settlement, before going to court. Last month, Jon Leibowitz, chairman of the F.T.C., said a final decision on whether to sue Google would be made before the end of this year.

Even if Google manages to soothe American concerns, a parallel European investigation into many of the same issues is proceeding apace. Above that, individual states are probing Google as well. The Times reports those states include New York, Texas and California.

According to the Times, practices questioned by the FTC include Google's use of AdWords as well as its smartphone business.

That exoneration, however, did not remedy the harms caused by a full year of censorship and secret proceedings — a form of “digital Guantanamo” — that knocked out an important and popular blog devoted to hip hop music and has nearly killed it.

The back story of how the government continually failed to prove cause in its case against Dajaz1 is certainly creepy enough to feed into the web's long-standing paranoia regarding federal efforts to control sharing content online. Los Angeles-based federal prosecutors were able to keep the site shuttered so long by obtaining extended time on three separate occasions--and they did it in secret.

Dajaz1's attorney termed these actions equal to "seizing the printing press of the New York Times" because the Times referred readers to concerts given by promoters who didn't pay A.S.C.A.P. fees for performances.

Attorney Bridges's remarks end with a direct statement regarding recent government efforts to make new laws supposedly aimed at piracy:

This entire episode shows that neither the government nor the recording industry deserves any additional powers with new so-called “antipiracy” legislation, especially in the context where copyright law has been expanded and new anti-piracy remedies have been crafted ***16 times*** since 1982. This episode shows that the copyright establishment and the government are very much the “rogues” that deserve to be reined in.

Critics of S.O.P.A. and its successor, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (C.I.S.P.A.)--one a failed attempt at shoring up digital piracy laws, the other a similar attempt that could well succeed--might consider a statement like that a rallying cry.

Here's how things played out.

The tweet in question came from Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) tweeted out,

zing!

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, a Texas Democrat who CNET notes was was named the "meanest" member of congress by Washingtonian magazine, wasn't having it. She stopped the hearing to read the tweet out loud and declared that Rep. King should apologize for his offensive behavior.

At this point Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisc.) suggested that the word "offensive" was itself offensive and should be stricken from the record. A ludicrous back-and-forth ensued.

In the meantime, all the amendments to the bill which would have removed the worst parts of the bill, like DNS blocking, were voted down by the pro-SOPA majority on the committee.

We'll leave you with the words of 83 engineers instrumental in building the internet, from their open letter to Congress:

"Censorship of Internet infrastructure will inevitably cause network errors and security problems. This is true in China, Iran and other countries that censor the network today; it will be just as true of American censorship. It is also true regardless of whether censorship is implemented via the DNS, proxies, firewalls, or any other method. Types of network errors and insecurity that we wrestle with today will become more widespread, and will affect sites other than those blacklisted by the American government."