U.S. House of Representatives passes CISPA! :-(
The United States House of Representatives approved the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or CISPA by a bipartisan majority (just in case you wondered “who your friends are?” – YOU HAVE NONE!) vote of 248 to 168. CISPA would permit Internet companies to hand over customer records and communications to the National Security Agency (NSA) and other agencies of the U.S. government.
CISPA would “waive every single privacy law ever enacted in the name of cybersecurity,” said Rep. Jared Polis, a Colorado Democrat, during today’s marathon floor debate. “Allowing the military and NSA to spy on Americans on American soil goes against every principle this country was founded on.”
Americans’ confidential information that could legally provided to the feds would “include health records, it can include firearm registration information, it can include credit card information,” warned Polis, a former Web entrepreneur who was a leader in opposing the Stop Online Piracy Act <SOPA> as well.
Although CISPA would not formally grant the NSA or the U.S. Department of Homeland Security any additional surveillance authority (an amendment by Democratic Representative Sheila Jackson Lee that headed in that general direction was withdrawn after CISPA’s author, Republican Mike Rogers, called it “… Big Brother on steroids”),
But it would usher in a new era of information sharing between companies and government agencies — with limited oversight and privacy safeguards. The House Rules committee yesterday rejected a series of modestly pro-privacy amendments, which led a coalition of civil-liberties groups to complain that “amendments that are imperative won’t even be considered” in a letter today.
These actions prompted some politicians, including Democratic Representative from California and House Intelligence Committee member Adam Schiff to oppose the bill.
As someone who worked for years in high tech and was charged with creating an inventory of Sun Microsystems equipment in that room on Folsom Street where telecommunications were duplicated and diverted to the NSA, I personally believe that such bills as CISPA and others are merely a government attempt to FORMALIZE a practice that has already been occurring for years. The illegal spying at Folsom Street by AT&T (SBC at the time) was retroactively made legal by the U.S. Congress in 2008.
I used to think that the greatest threat to my individual liberties as an American was the California Legislature. Now, I know that the California Legislature is only the NEAREST threat.
The CNET article notes a big difference between CISP and its SOPA predecessor:
One of the biggest differences between CISPA and its SOPA predecessor is that the Web blocking bill was defeated by a broad alliance of Internet companies and millions of peeved users. Not CISPA: the House Intelligence committee proudly lists letters of support from Facebook, Microsoft, Oracle, Symantec, Verizon, AT&T, Intel, and trade association CTIA, which counts representatives of T-Mobile, Sybase, Nokia, and Qualcomm as board members.
Of COURSE this long list of companies supports CISPA – there are probably literally BILLIONS of dollars to be made.
Hopefully, the U.S. Senate will REJECT this bill, forcing what I believe to be the current de facto Internet and telecommunication surveillance to remain “in the shadows” – so that, even if the practices continue to occur, they are not practices that are ENDORSED as being AT ALL in line with the principles upon which the United States of America was founded.
The White House has formally threatened a veto of CISPA.
“Once the government gets expansive national security authorities, there’s no going back,” Michelle Richardson, ACLU legislative counsel, said after the House vote. “We encourage the Senate to let this horrible bill fade into obscurity.”
(Note added April 27, 2012: Declan McCullagh of CNET has created an FAQ with information on the ways CISPA would affect YOU [if it were to become law] and the article contains a link to a WIRED article about a new datacenter that the NSA is building in Utah.)
-Bill at
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