Howard Rich in the Washington Times:
Having failed earlier this year to foist an Orwellian kill switch on Internet free speech, Congress is now peddling a kinder, gentler piece of “cybersecurity legislation.” However, Washington’s latest attempt to play Big Brother on the Internet poses an equally clear and present danger to our fundamental liberties.
With the furor over the Stop Online Piracy Act having subsided, congressional leaders apparently are hoping that the ire of America’s burgeoning information freedom movement has been exhausted. They’re also hoping that the same coalition that successfully shot down the Piracy Act won’t notice the sinister outlines of its latest alphabet soup invasion – the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA). In fact, they’ve enlisted the help of heavy hitters such as Facebook and Microsoft in an effort to convince us that the Web is somehow on-board with this latest example of unchecked government intrusion into our private lives.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
The stated purpose of CISPA is to “allow elements of the intelligence community to share cyberthreat intelligence with private-sector entities and to encourage the sharing of such intelligence.” While the first part of that equation isn’t particularly problematic (law enforcement is a core function of government and should alert providers to criminal activity allegedly occurring within their networks), the “sharing” component of this legislation represents an insidiously expansive assault on liberty.
How expansive?
“CISPA would allow [Internet Service Providers], social networking sites, and anyone else handling Internet communications to monitor users and pass information to the government without any judicial oversight,” writes Rainey Reitman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
In other words, concepts such as “probable cause” or even “reasonable suspicion” would no longer apply.
What sort of information are we talking about, though? And who would be reviewing it?
According to the American Civil Liberties Union, this legislation “would give the government, including military spy agencies, unprecedented powers to snoop through people’s personal information – medical records, private emails, financial information – all without a warrant, proper oversight or limits.”
Translation? “Big Brother is watching you.”
Full piece here.
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