In the wake of the supposed death of the Stop Online Piracy Act, a brutal policy that would have threatened the concept of Internet privacy and freedom that Americans have come to enjoy, a new piece of legislation has slipped below the media radar to attack these rights once again: The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act.
CISPA was introduced in November by Representative Michael Rogers (R-MI). Its main goal is to protect the government against cyber attacks, but it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that the bill still manages to overreach its goal and threaten simple online civil liberties. The problem is the level of surveillance this bill will allow the federal government over literally everything everybody does online. @@http://intelligence.house.gov/hr-3523-bill-and-amendments@@ @@http://mikerogers.house.gov/@@

I’m all for protecting against cyber attacks; indeed, it would be irresponsible of the U.S. government to not take these attacks seriously. However, these attacks can be dealt with without allowing the private Internet activity of the everyday American to be presented on a smorgasbord of privileged information to government officials under the guise of preventing cyber terrorism.
And, honestly, I don’t have any dirty secrets online that I feel threatened about having found out by the government — it’s not the information being seen that I’m concerned about. It’s the information being used.
We’re college students, and we spend way too much of our time online. We throw way too much of our information into the digital void and we trust our privacy settings and password protection more than we should. But we probably aren’t talking about a murder we committed last week or a felony we’re planning. We’re talking about dumb, arbitrary crap: homework, sex, work, friends. In a word — life. It’s not information that needs to be private, but it’s information that should be private.
CISPA would allow surveillance that could not only access this information, but give it to other government agencies. The file that the government has on you (and yes, there is a file) would grow thicker. My concern lies with how they plan on using that file. It’s a time bomb I don’t want to test.
Much like SOPA, CISPA is not nearly specific enough. It’s broadness is daunting and begging to be taken advantage of. @@http://intelligence.house.gov/cyber-bill-key-points@@
Additionally, this bill expressly supersedes any state or other federal laws that provide online privacy, using the phrase the CISPA can be used to collect and share information, “Notwithstanding any other provision of law.” Broad and powerful are not complimentary characteristics when it comes to online legislation.
American Civil Liberties Union spokeswoman Michelle Richardson told The Guardian that CISPA “allows companies to turn over private information to the government and for them to use it for any purpose that they see fit without a warrant.” What this information can consist of, however, the bill does not expressly state. @@http://www.aclu.org/blog/author/michelle-richardson@@
This bill is an unfortunate Big Brother mechanism hiding behind the excuse of national security. It would not be that difficult to define certain terms in the bill — what information is to be collected, who is to look at this information, how will this information be used, etc. Keeping it vague allows for different government agencies and big-name online powerhouses like Google and Facebook to dip into the ever-expanding pool of our personal information for really any reason at all.
SOPA inspired blackouts and protests, but CISPA is moving fast and quiet. It’s not the same bill, and it doesn’t even offer the same threats, but it’s another branch on the tree that is our online lives that’s about to be cut off.