House Intel Chair: Google Secretly Backs CISPA

Google Declines Official Comment on Controversial Bill

After Google played a central role rallying the public against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), the House Intelligence Committee chairman Rep. Mike Rogers (R – MI) claims that Google is secretly supporting the bill many are calling “SOPA 2.

They’ve been helpful and supportive of trying to find the right language in the bill,” Rogers said of Google, which declined to comment on the new bill called the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA).

The bill aims primarily at the sharing of private information, empowering the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to collect data from private companies on anything they decide is a “cyber threat.”

Though officials insist that the bill isn’t meant to be used in this manner, the text explicitly includes “misappropriation” of intellectual property as a “cyber threat” to be dealt with by the DHS through a variety of means, and empowers it with the use of “cybersecurity systems” to move against such threats.

Author: Jason Ditz

Jason Ditz is Senior Editor for Antiwar.com. He has 20 years of experience in foreign policy research and his work has appeared in The American Conservative, Responsible Statecraft, Forbes, Toronto Star, Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Providence Journal, Washington Times, and the Detroit Free Press.