The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act just passed in the House, during a vote that was moved up a day and staged during the NFL draft. It vastly expands the already onerous act into one that allows significant domestic surveillance.
Basically this means CISPA can no longer be called a cybersecurity bill at all. The government would be able to search information it collects under CISPA for the purposes of investigating American citizens with complete immunity from all privacy protections as long as they can claim someone committed a “cybersecurity crime”. Basically it says the 4th Amendment does not apply online, at all. Moreover, the government could do whatever it wants with the data as long as it can claim that someone was in danger of bodily harm, or that children were somehow threatened—again, notwithstanding absolutely any other law that would normally limit the government’s power.
This bill must be blocked in the Senate. If you’re a US citizen, you need to call your Senator now. This action list over on Reddit is fantastic, or, once again, Grassroutes makes this easy. Just click a button below:
(If you’re reading the feed, you probably won’t see the Grassroutes widget above. Click here to see the buttons, and to get the code to paste the widget on your own site.
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