Monday, 22 April 2013

CISPA is Back

While we were all distracted with Boston and other events, the US House of Representatives has passed the controversial Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protect Act (CISPA).

For those of you that don't know what CISPA is or what it could mean:
CISPA sets up a system for web sites and other internet providers to perform real-time sharing of information with government services like the FBI or NSA.

The bill has effectively no protections for the privacy of its users, and it potentially a huge violation of the 4th amendment. As the procedure for getting an unconstitutional law stricken requires a Supreme Court trial, this could amount to 4-5 years of abuses of privacy on the Internet.

To make it clear how bad this could be. AOL once published search data for a research project, and they thought it was properly anonymous, however with analysis of just the search terms it was possible to positively identify people.

So, imagine every weird query you've typed into Google. Now imagine that every time you type something, a copy of it goes to the government as you're typing it, and they've analysed it for criminal behaviour before you've pressed the enter key.

For more information, read the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) FAQ on CISPA: https://www.eff.org/cybersecurity-bill-faq

Electronic Frontier Foundation wants you to get involved in their action campaign against CISPA. You can go to the site and fill in the blanks to send a quick note to your representatives asking them to oppose CISPA.

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