I’m mad about Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, and you should be too. When even a state-run Russian news station thinks a cyber security bill is “worse than SOPA,” it’s safe to say it has some big problems.
I’m mad about Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, and you should be too. When even a state-run Russian news station thinks a cyber security bill is “worse than SOPA,” it’s safe to say it has some big problems.
But CISPA has already made its way through the House, and it threatens to infringe upon our rights in its own uniquely awful way.
CISPA gives corporations like Verizon, AT&T, Google and Facebook the legal right to intercept, read or prevent the delivery of your messages if they are deemed a “cyberthreat.” They are also supposed to pass on questionable content to the relevant government agency.
Cyberthreat is a vague term, but the government can use its new powers in regard to “cybersecurity, cybercrime, protecting people from harm, protecting children from exploitation and national security.” Since the powers granted in CISPA give almost as much power to corporations as they do to the government, this bill hasn’t generated the same kind of organized outrage that SOPA did. In fact, Facebook is publicly supporting the bill, and so are Microsoft and Intel.
Every time a bill dealing with cybersecurity comes up, we get shown again how thoroughly uneducated and out of touch our elected officials are when it comes to technology.
They are swayed by imagined threats and exaggerated examples. The sponsors have defended the bill with loud, absurd speeches about cyberterrorism and the supposed threat we face from foreign countries attacking our networks and information.
But really, if anyone needs to be worried about securing networks and information, it’s the government. This bill won’t be better-equipping federal agencies or making the web more secure. It’s centered solely on the data of citizens. Your average individual would be of little interest to these hypothetical cabals of foreign hackers, and this bill won’t make us any safer.
If our credit card information or Social Security number isn’t safe, then the fault usually lies with us for not having been more careful. (That nice Nigerian prince swore he only needed our bank account info so he could give us money!) The government, on the other hand, has a history of skimping on security and regretting it later.
Cyber warfare is becoming more common, and preparing for it is a smart idea. But preparing for it by increasing the amount of data that corporations and the National Security agency can collect is a dumb idea.
In fact, CISPA does nothing that its sponsors claim it will do. The bill’s stated purpose is to protect against efforts to “degrade, disrupt or destroy” networks and systems, but nothing in the bill has any effect on the actual infrastructure of the web. While it’s good that CISPA wouldn’t drastically change the way the Internet works (unlike SOPA/PIPA), the fact that it’s called a cybersecurity bill is a huge inaccuracy. A cybersecurity bill would be welcome, if it didn’t completely violate the privacy of individuals or damage the openness of the Internet like SOPA.
CISPA is not that bill. CISPA is a surveillance bill. It affects your privacy, it encourages the websites you use to monitor their members, and it violates your constitutional rights.
In addition, this sort of bill is almost totally unnecessary. Businesses have already shown themselves to be very cooperative with government agencies and law enforcement as far as providing information about criminals. Facebook has a law enforcement hotline and Verizon regularly complies with subpoenas for phone records. When it’s preventing crime or catching real criminals, most websites and service providers are more than willing to be of assistance. Encouraging them to watch people’s information more carefully and deny service to users who are deemed questionable is a step backward.
People already hate that their phones and web browsers gather their information, but it’s becoming a necessary evil of life in the 21st century. Making this information more easily used by the companies that collect it should infuriate us, but CISPA has somehow stayed out of the limelight.
Maybe people are growing resigned to the fact that their information isn’t going to be private anymore. Maybe we expended our ability to care and energy to act on SOPA and Kony. Maybe it just hasn’t been publicized well enough.
But CISPA needs to be fought. It is a flagrant violation of the First and Fourth Amendments. I can accept that my information is being gathered, but I can’t accept that a company would have the right to censor my messages or emails if they take issue with the content. I can’t imagine a situation where that would happen, granted, but the principle of it flies in the face of everything I stand for. I don’t think the government should have that kind of power, much less Facebook.
This bill violates everyone’s privacy, whether they’re college students who never let go of their smartphones or someone’s grandma on her old Gateway desktop and dial-up Internet connection. Our rights should apply everywhere, not just offline.
CISPA shouldn’t be passed. There’s a need for some extra security on the web, but CISPA doesn’t provide that. We don’t have to cater to people who use fear to get the legislation they want passed, and we don’t deserve to have this kind of legislation in the first place.
