The House passed the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), a bill that purports to improve U.S. cybersecurity. In fact, the bill does little to protect us but rather a lot to destroy the privacy of American communications.
The bill allows private entities to share "cyber threat" information with the government without liability. Written that way, CISPA doesn't sound so bad. The catch is in the definition of cyber threat information. This includes any information on "(i) a vulnerability of a system or network of a government or private entity; (ii) a threat to the integrity, confidentiality, or availability of a system or network of a government or private entity or any information stored on, processed on, or transiting such a system or network; (iii) efforts to deny access to or degrade, disrupt, or destroy a system or network of a government or private entity; or (iv) efforts to gain unauthorized access to a system or network of a government or private entity, including to gain such unauthorized access for the purpose of exfiltrating information stored on, processed on, or transiting a system or network of a government or private entity."
That's an incredibly broad net. It's big enough to include anyone sending copyrighted information, regardless of whether that use is legal. It's large enough to catch anyone using a system that might slow network traffic, even when the system is legal and being used for legitimate purposes (such as when NASA uses BitTorrent to ship satellite data or a games company does the same for updates to its software; there are lots of legitimate uses for file-sharing software).
So why is industry supporting the bill? It's the "Get Out of Jail Free" card. There's no liability on the companies for sharing private data with the government. If a company gives the government emails that it thinks contains a virus and, in the process, mistakenly exposes a private citizen's private data, CISPA provides a free pass. No violation of HIPAA -- or any other privacy law.
What will the bill accomplish? It will give the National Security Agency loads of private data about Americans, who they're communicating with, when, how often, what they're saying. In some cases, the cyber threat information can be used for the investigation and prosecution of certain crimes, no warrant needed.
The bottom line though is will CISPA help solve the nation's cybersecurity problems? That's where the bill's premise is highly questionable. CISPA allows sharing of cybersecurity threats in an effort to head off attacks as they're occurring. But there's little evidence that such "real-time" sharing can really work. Efforts with the EINSTEIN program for anomaly detection (information sharing to detect odd behavior and protect against it) hasn't netted much; indeed there are reasons to expect that type of response can't be effective at large-scale. The hidden fact is that CISPA completely avoids the issue of protecting critical infrastructure. The bill's authors said the reason for CISPA not covering critical infrastructure was "that [was] outside of our jurisdiction."
With more and more private data residing in third-party providers -- think Gmail and Facebook -- CISPA's refrain might be stated as "bye-bye privacy, bye-bye freedom, bye-bye innocent until proven guilty." This bill creates a privacy invasion that makes the warrantless wiretapping of the Bush administration look like a minor break-in.
In 1789, when this nation was young and not very powerful, we passed the First Amendment, protecting the right to publish and implicitly the right to read anonymously , and the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure. Those amendments have protected Americans and their state for over two centuries. In his inaugural address, Franklin Roosevelt said, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself -- nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." The Obama administration has said it will veto the bill -- as well it should. We need cybersecurity protections, but CISPA is completely the wrong way to go about accomplishing that.
NOTE: Two errors have been corrected from the original posting, which gave a link to the bill brought to the House floor and quoted from that bill, rather than correctly linking to and quoting from the amended bill as passed by the House. These errors resulted from using the most recent version of the bill on thomas.loc.gov as posted on April 29.
Howard Steven Friedman: NASA Simply Stopped Being a Priority
Oh! and a rather sobering truism: Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
"without liability."
Spelt P. O. L. I. C. E. S. T. A. T. E.
"an incredibly broad net."
Spelt: S.P.Y.N.E.T.
"why is industry supporting the bill"
They don’t realize its their own death warrant.
"What will the bill accomplish"
The end of humanity. But is that such a bad thing?
"The bottom line though is will CISPA help"
citizens monitor government?
"the EINSTEIN program"
Only the universe and state control are infinite.
"bye-bye privacy, bye-bye freedom, bye-bye innocent until proven guilty."
To where Habeas Corpus has gone before.
"when this nation was young and not very powerful"
the bearing of arms was enshrined, to protect the people from political oppression. Welcome Back, to the divine right of rulers.
"The only thing we have to fear is"
f**kwits conjuring up authoritarian regimes, by preventing referendums.
"The Obama administration"
may be the last elected administration we’ll ever see.
"CISPA is"
opening the hen house door for the fox.
I have been on the internet since before the internet (Checkout ARPANET design for it :) ) there have been many attempts at "regulation" we may have something to worry about, we may not. You see part of the beauty & wonder of the internet is it's military childhood, it is the TRUE TERMINATOR, can't be taken down. Question is how much will big bis. sell us out To the gov before we can stop them.
Personally I think we're FCked
Javahead
Google and Facebook must realize were not BITS and BYTES, were the people who use there SERVICE,
Read the fine print people, in there it says they can do ANYTHING they want to with YOU, your data, your emails, your Pictures, and then SELL AT PROFIT, YOU again you dont have a say so you agreed when you clicked I AGREE, Has anyone read the small print !!!!
Thats whats wrong with CISPA the small print gives OUR GOVERNMENT the right to LISTEN, that ised to be referred to as DOMESTIC SPYING, which was outlawed until George Bush who felt the PATRIOT ACT should be forced on Americans. AT&T installed listening secret rooms, with a full pass by Justice and no legal recourse by US Citizens who they LISTEN TO !!!!! , NO TO CISPA