The Obama administration issued a threat on Tuesday to veto a House cyber-security bill that would confer blanket corporate immunity to companies sharing user information to U.S. intelligence agencies, its second such threat in two years against the legislation.
Known by the acronym CISPA, the bill is meant to facilitate data sharing between intelligence agencies and the private sector to help protect against cyber espionage. It was approved in secret last week by a House intelligence committee by an 18-2 vote after changes, including the removal of a national security exemption, were made during markup.
The committee tweeted that it’s scheduled for a vote on the House floor this week. But the Obama administration still wants more changes, and senior advisers would recommend President Barack Obama veto the bill as written, according to a statement of administration policy (pdf).
Worth keeping a close eye on.
The Internet Defense League
The Internet can always use more heroes and Alexis Ohanian, founder of Reddit, and Fight for the Future have formed the Internet Defense League to make it so.
Public enemy number one: ACTA and CISPA style legislation that seems to sprout like mushrooms these days.
Via Forbes:
Ohanian describes the project, which they plan to officially launch next month, as a “Bat-Signal for the Internet.” Any website owner can sign up on the group’s website to add a bit of code to his or her site–or receive that code by email at the time of a certain campaign–that can be triggered in the case of a political crisis like SOPA, adding an activist call-to-action to all the sites involved, such as a widget or banner asking users to sign petitions, call lawmakers, or boycott companies.
“People who wish to be tapped can see, oh look, the Bat-Signal is up. Time to do something,” says Ohanian. “Whatever website you own, this is a way for you to be notified if something comes up and take some basic actions…If we aggregate everyone that’s doing it, the numbers start exploding.”
Developers are encouraged to join the League. GitHub is here, a Google Group here and Tracker is here.
Love that Alexis Ohanian has jumped into online activism with both feet. It may be an even bigger gift to the Web than Reddit was.
The American people expect their Government to enhance security without undermining their privacy and civil liberties. Without clear legal protections and independent oversight, information sharing legislation will undermine the public’s trust in the Government as well as in the Internet by undermining fundamental privacy, confidentiality, civil liberties, and consumer protections.A statement from The White House • Which included specific reasoning as to why President Obama does not support Congress’ newest efforts to regulate the internet. The President believes the legislation, called CIPSA, is too far-reaching, does not include adequate limitations on the transference of personal information between private companies and the government, and unfairly shields companies from lawsuits pertaining to possible misuse of consumers’ private data. “The Administration looks forward to continuing to engage with the Congress in a bipartisan, bicameral fashion to enact cybersecurity legislation to address these critical issues,” said the White House, continuing, “however, for the reasons stated herein, if H.R. 3523 were presented to the President, his senior advisors would recommend that he veto the bill.” source (via • follow)
» The key word here is “purported.” Critics of SOPA alleged that the text of the bill was too draconian, and would have allowed for shutting down entire websites for questionable infractions (for example, linking to a message board with a comment that directed users to a site with copyrighted material). Opposition to CISPA, however, comes due to privacy concerns: Critics say the bill allows private companies (such as Facebook and Microsoft which opposed SOPA but support CISPA) to exchange personal information and private data with the government a bit too easily. We’ve still got to delve into the nitty-gritty here, but we recommend you seek out a few different takes on the legislation. TechDirt and Geekosystem are both opposed, GigaOm is so-so, and Lifehacker has a nice rundown as to why Facebook and Microsoft opposed SOPA but support CISPA.
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