The Internet: In Case You Missed It: the US Congress Takes Your Internet Privacy - by Kristina Chew

To the disappointment of advocates for civil liberties and internet freedom, the controversial Cyber Intelligence and Protection Act (CISPA) passed the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday by a vote of 288-127. 196 Republicans voted for the measure and almost half the House Democrats.

Few would dispute that cybersecurity is not a concern. A rapid flurry of recent cyberattacks of government and corporate websites has highlighted the issue. But as Internet security experts argue, CISPA approaches the problem in a wrongheaded manner, allowing companies to share information to make their networks more secure but at a cost to users’ rights.

To protect the U.S. against hackers, CISPA allows companies, including internet service providers, to share information, the better to coordinate efforts in the event of a cyberattack. But CISPA is vague about precisely what sort of information will be shared. As a result, “in theory everything from e-mails to medical records could end up being shipped to intelligence agencies, even if it is not needed,” the Economist points out.

Read more: In Case You Missed It: Congress Takes Your Internet Privacy | Care2 Causes

Internet and Privacy: U.S. turns spy agency on itself, critics of cyber bill say - by Tabassum Zakaria

(cartoon by Mark Parisi)

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a cyber security bill on Thursday that would allow the government and companies to share information about hacking, but which has raised privacy concerns and a veto threat from the White House.

The House approved the bill 248-168, prompting the top Republican and Democrat on the intelligence committee who sponsored it to issue a joint statement lauding the bipartisan approval.

The legislation allows federal agencies such as the National Security Agency, an intelligence agency that eavesdrops overseas and protects classified U.S. government computer networks, to share secret cyber threat information with American companies to help the private sector protect its networks.
Critics had raised privacy concerns that the sharing in return of “threat information” from private network operators to the government was so broad as to allow the NSA to effectively collect data on American communications, which is generally prohibited by law.

For more: U.S. turns spy agency on itself, critics of cyber bill say - The Globe and Mail

Civil Liberties: Have Facebook and Google Turned Into Government Spies? The Dangerous New Law Before the US Congress (CISPA)

T he U.S. House of Representatives is expected to pass a reprehensible cyber-security bill that seeks to protect online companies—giant social media firms to data-sharing networks controlling utilities—from cyber attack. It is reprehensible because, as Democratic San Jose Rep. Zoe Lofgren said this week, it gives the federal government too much access to the private lives of every Internet user. Or as Libertarian Rep. Ron Paul also bluntly put it, it turns Facebook and Google into “government spies.”

But that’s not the biggest problem with the Congress’s urge to address a real problem—protecting the Internet from cyber attacks. While House passage launches a process that continues in the Senate, the bigger problem with the best known of the cyber bills before the House, CISPA, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, is not what is in it -- which is troubling enough -- but what is not on Congress’s desk: a comprehensive approach to stop basic constitutional rights from eroding in the Internet Age.

“I don’t think the current cyber-security debate is adequately protecting civil liberties,” said Anjali Dalal, a resident fellow with the Information Society Project at Yale Law School (and a blogger). “CISPA seems to place constitutionally suspect behavior outside of judicial review. The bill immunizes all participating entities ‘acting in good faith.’ So what happens when an ISP hands over mountains of data under the encouragement and appreciation of the federal government? We can’t sue the government, because they didn’t do anything. And we can’t sue the ISP because the bill forbids it.”

For more: Facebook and Google Turned Into Government Spies? The Dangerous New Law Before Congress (CISPA) | Civil Liberties | AlterNet