CISPA: What is It?

CISPA, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act is aproposed law that was passed by the House of Representatives on April 27, 2012.This law, along with SOPA, and PIPA threatens our internet privacy. The billwould, in official terms, allow “thesharing of certain cyber threat intelligence and cyber threat informationbetween the intelligence community and cybersecurity entities, and for otherpurposes”. However, various companies are against it, just as they opposed SOPAand PIPA, due to the invasion of privacy.

President Obama himself is against this law and has threatened to veto it. The majorityof the Internet is against the bill. Just recently, Mozilla has also spoken outagainst the law, stating:

“Whilewe wholeheartedly support a more secure Internet, CISPA has a broad andalarming reach that goes far beyond Internet security. The law infringes on ourprivacy, includes vague definitions of cybersecurity, and grants immunities tocompanies and government that are too broad around information misuse. We hopethe Senate takes the time to fully and openly consider these issues withstakeholder input before moving forward with this legislation.”

CISPAis slightly different than SOPA - SOPA was more about copyright infringement. CISPAis similar to SOPA in that they both claim to enforce cyber security. However,this cyber security comes at the cost of the invasion of our privacy.

Someof the problems with CISPA are listed below.

1.     Allows the sharing of any kind of information between private companies and governments.That means Facebook could share your privateinformation with the government.

2.     The government doesn’t require any kind ofwarrant to take your information.

3.      Companiesthat participate in information sharing are immune to any kind of liability.

CISPAmay seem like a lawbill that would protect our cyber security against“hackers”, but in reality, it’s just an excuse in the form of a law from the USgovernment to invade your privacy.