Well we knew it would come to this, despite growing outcry against the Cyber Intelligence and Sharing Protection Act the House of Representatives (who are they representing?) is holding a debate on this controversial bill. We have talked about CISPA in the past and the bills that led up to what is nothing more than a revocation of your right to private communication in the past and what the implications of a bill so loosely outlined will mean in the coming months.The debate for CISPA is happening right now; and while the issues that the authors and the backers of this bill want you think about are real (security etc) this is not what the bill will bring. These same people also call institutional censorship like that going on in China, Iran, and Syria wrong. Yet when it suits the people that bank roll their election campaigns (which by the way are not the people they are supposed to represent) they forget all about that and do whatever they can to address their needs and concerns.
For those that do not know CISPA will allow the seamless (and currently voluntary) sharing of any and all information about you when you use public or paid computer services. This means that Facebook could voluntarily release all information about you to the FBI or any other governmental agency without violating any privacy laws. Conversely it might also be possible for them to share limited information with other corporations in the interest of Cyber Security.
In fact the whole bill is so loosely written that you could almost make it apply to any situation and remove the laws that protect your privacy and communication. To get an idea of who will gain the most from this bill all you have to do is look at the major funders of this bill (as posted by DigitalTrends ). Just look at the list here. It is massive and it is also all of the companies that will benefit from being able to share your data with each other. Oh, did we forget to mention that although this is called the Cybersecurity Intelligence and protection Act they managed to slip Intellection Property into the bill…
So if you do not want this to pass call your Representative and remind them of who they are supposed to represent. Let them know that you will not be supporting their next bid for office regardless of the amount of money thrown into their campaign. Then contact some of the corporate supporters and let them know what you feel; after all this is all that these people understand.
We have a feeling that today’s outcome will decide on what the next few months hold in terms of open opposition. If things are anything like SOPA and PIPA… well you all might remember the web response and how Anonymous responded as well.
Live link as of 4-26-2012 3:24PM Eastern Time US
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