34 Civil Liberties Groups Speak Out Against CISPA in Lead Up to Hearings. On Monday, EFF and over 30 other Internet rights organizations sent a letter to members of Congress demanding they vote no on the "cybersecurity" bill known as CISPA.
The letter starts off a week in which Congress will hold three different hearings about CISPA and computer and network security. In addition to the letter, each hearing will provide opportunity to voice many of the bill's problems. We encourage you to join the fight and tell your Representative to say no to CISPA. In the coalition letter, groups including Mozilla, CDT, ACLU, EFF, and the American Library Association called on representatives to oppose CISPA because of privacy and civil liberties concerns: CISPA's information sharing regime allows the transfer of vast amounts of data, including sensitive information like internet records or the content of emails, to any agency in the government including military and intelligence agencies like the National Security Agency or the Department of Defense Cyber Command.
Advocacy group flip-flops twice over CISPA surveillance bill. News analysis Politicians behind a surveillance bill that would let Internet companies open their networks to the U.S. government briefly found a new friend this week: a non-profit group known for its privacy advocacy.
Until yesterday, opposition to the CISPA legislation appeared to be growing , with Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul and House Democrats raising new concerns. A petition opposing the bill, also known as the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, had garnered nearly 800,000 signatures. Then the Center for Democracy and Technology, a well-known advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., defected from the expanding anti-CISPA coalition. In a statement yesterday, CDT announced that "we will not oppose" the bill going to the floor for a vote. CDT's timing could not have been more auspicious for the backers of the controversial cybersecurity bill, who have been trying to solidify support before a House floor debate that begins tomorrow. And so, around 6 p.m. Cispa: US 'intelligence sharing' bill explained - What is Cispa? After Sopa and Pipa were defeated, the latest piece of web legislation to rear its head in the US is The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (Cispa).
What is it? How does it differ from Sopa and Pipa? And how could it affect web users? Update 27/04/2012: The US House of Representatives has passed Cispa, on a vote of 248 to 168. Some last-minute amendments included making non-national-security data subject to the Freedom of Information Act, sunsetting the measure after five years and barring the government (.pdf) from reviewing library, firearms, tax and medical records. What is Cispa? Is it just Sopa in a different form? Cispa is -- nominally -- all about cybersecurity. Early versions of the bill did talk about protecting intellectual property, but this was edited out. So what would Cispa change? The author of the bill, Mike Rogers, says that it is intended for tracking the activities of hackers, terrorists and foreign states such as China. Who supports Cispa? Facebook.