While people have been appalled by the recent Boston bombing, the bill known as Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act was approved by the House of Representatives and is soon going to reach the US Senate. In the meanwhile, people who are against the dangerous legislation cooperate their efforts in order to put an end to CISPA.
A few days before the House of Representatives voted on CISPA, the EFF urged people to sign a petition against the legislation (thus far, they managed to collect more than 177.000 signatures). In the meanwhile, Mike Rogers, a supporter of the devious bill, called the opponents “a 14-year-old tweeter in the basement”.
Regardless of repeated efforts to stop the bill, it was still favored by the House of Representatives, a resolution labeled as “shameful” by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. In response, the famous hacker collective called Anonymous, together with a number of other portals, went black in sign of protest to the decision.
Opponents of the legislation called it a “dangerously vague” surveillance act, which, in case of becoming law, would empower the government of the United States to collect sensitive data with no need of a warrant. It means that such online giants as Facebook, Twitter, Google, and telecommunication firms will have to pass on your personal details if the government wants it, with no repercussions whatsoever. In other words, the bill would bridge a gap between the private companies that have access to your data for nefarious purposes (though they would likely never do this) and the American government.
If the American companies voluntarily hand information along the one-way street to the local authorities, it would effectively mean the Fourth Amendment doesn’t have to apply, because it is actually not snooping if it was handed to the authorities under “cybersecurity” grounds.
If the law is enforced, the American government is able to do just about anything it wants with your private information once it is in its hands, paying no attention to the Fourth Amendment and notwithstanding lacking a search warrant. The matter is that this is allowed as long as it is lawful and pertains to “cybersecurity” purposes, rather than “national security” purposes. But due to the fact that the language in the bill is very ill-defined, it could be used for more reasons than initially intended. This is why media reports point out that the US President warned that he would eventually veto the legislation if it’s to pass the Congress “as currently crafted”.
Refer from: CISPA Reached the US Senate
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