It has only been a couple of months since massive public opposition killed the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) act, but activists are rallying again with the fear that a new bill, titled the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), is empowering the Department of Homeland Security with tools that would effectively do the same thing SOPA did.
CISPA’s nominal concentration on “cybersecurity” has somewhat kept it off the radar, but grants broad information “sharing” powers to the federal government, and freedom to use collected data, including anything gathered on American citizens, in any way they argue will benefit “national security.”
The real SOPA-esque portion of the bill, however, is an explicit clause empowering the federal government to use “cybersecurity systems” to protect intellectual property, which is virtually exactly what the Hollywood-backed SOPA was designed to do.
The bill’s authors defend the clause, insisting that the reference to “intellectual property” is only meant to cover research and development by the US government and not, for instance, a song. Despite this claim, the bill never makes a distinction between the two.
Why even bother, our idiot lawmakers are just gonna keep proposing new bills that will do the same thing. They're going to keep trying to shove this thing down the American people's throats and eventually they're going to succeed.
No they won't. Revolution will succeed.
Americans–at least the ones who love liberty!–had better pay attention to this Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act ("CISPA"). It's a backdoor attempt to do what the defunct Stop Online Piracy Act ("SOPA") was meant to do–allow government interference with the Internet. The U.S. Government–like all governments–hates a free, unfettered Internet.
Tell your congressional hacks to oppose this crap.
Orville – I see your point… but the reality is we are under assault. Yeah, we'd better pay attention to this, and also to the 100 other similar attacks constantly underway now. It's not looking good. In fact, I'm not seeing a way to turn it at this point.