Gamincs Blog

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) is a United States proposed law introduced on November 30, 2011 by U.S. Representative Michael Rogers (R-MI) and 111 co-sponsors. It was passed in the House of Representatives on April 26, 2012. Prior to the amendments offered during final passage of the bill that would address many Adminstration concerns, President Obama threatened to veto the bill.
The bill would allow the voluntary sharing of attack and threat information between the U.S. government and security cleared technology and manufacturing companies in an attempt to ensure the security of networks against patterns of attack; the most recent version of the CISPA bill may remove any reference to intellectual property. Several commentators have distinguished CISPA from the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) bill.CISPA was reported out of committee on December 1, 2011. CISPA has been criticized by advocates of Internet privacy and civil liberties, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the American Civil Liberties Union, and Avaaz.org, because they feel it contains too few limits on how and when the government may monitor private information when it might become collaterally entangled in the process of passing threat information, and too few safeguards with respect to how the data may be used; they fear that such new powers could be used to surveil the general public rather than to pursue the stated foreign spies or hackers.

Against CISPA:


Russia Today, a Russian state owned broadcast medium, was one of the first organizations to oppose CISPA, and was the first known source to use the phrase "Worse than SOPA".

Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, expressed opposition to the bill stating, “It is threatening the rights of people in America, and effectively rights everywhere, because what happens in America tends to affect people all over the world. Even though the SOPA and PIPA acts were stopped by huge public outcry, it’s staggering how quickly the US government has come back with a new, different, threat to the rights of its citizens.”

U.S. Representative Ron Paul (R-TX) has publicly opposed the bill calling it "Big Brother writ large." Cenk Uygur, from Current TV, backed the Representative's opinion and did a piece where he highlights one of Mike Rogers' speech about the bill to the business community. He also summarized the bill to his audience.

36 groups currently oppose CISPA with an addition of 6 groups as of April 21st. The Electronic Frontier Foundation lists a growing list of opposition as well as a list of security experts, academics, and engineers in opposition of the bill. They also published the statement Don’t Let Congress Use "Cybersecurity" Fears to Erode Digital Rights.

Opposition to CISPA includes more than 762,000 online petitioners who have signed global civic organization Avaaz.org's petition to members of the US Congress entitled "Save the Internet from the US". Avaaz also has a petition to Facebook, Microsoft, and IBM entitled "The end of Internet privacy", signed by more than 730,000 people.

The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) published a statement titled "Cybersecurity's 7-Step Plan for Internet Freedom." The CDT openly opposes the Mike Rogers bill based on these 7-step criteria. The CDT has also openly supported a competing bill in the house sponsored by U.S. Representative Dan Lungren (R-CA) that has yet to be reported by the committee.

The Constitution Project (TCP) "believes cybersecurity legislation currently pending before Congress possess major risks to civil liberties that must be addressed before any bill is enacted into law."

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has also issued a statement opposing the bill stating, "The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act would create a cybersecurity exception to all privacy laws and allow companies to share the private and personal data they hold on their American customers with the government for cybersecurity purposes." As the statement continues, "Beyond the potential for massive data collection authorization, the bill would provide no meaningful oversight of, or accountability for, the use of these new information-sharing authorities."

The Sunlight Foundation states, "The new cybersecurity bill, CISPA, or HR 3523, is terrible on transparency. The bill proposes broad new information collection and sharing powers (which many other organizations are covering at length). Even as the bill proposes those powers, it proposes to limit public oversight of this work."

Demand Progress opposes CISPA, stating "The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or CISPA, would obliterate any semblance of online privacy in the United States."

Competitive Enterprise Institute joins with TechFreedom, FreedomWorks, Americans For Limited Government, Liberty Coalition, Al Cardenas, and American Conservative Union to write a letter to Congress.[45] Competitive Enterprise Institute states, "Despite the bill's noble intentions, however, it risks unduly expanding federal power, undermining freedom of contract, and harming U.S. competitiveness in the technology sector." The Competitive Enterprise Institute lists 6 problems within the bill itself and how to fix those problems.

Reporters Without Borders states, "Reporters Without Borders is deeply concerned with the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011 (CISPA), the cyber security bill now before the US Congress. In the name of the war on cyber crime, it would allow the government and private companies to deploy draconian measures to monitor, even censor, the Web. It might even be used to close down sites that publish classified files or information."

testPAC opposes CISPA stating "CISPA would effectively take the door off the hinge of every household in America, but lacks the tools necessary to distinguish whether there is a criminal hiding in the attic. Why surrender the core of our privacy for the sake of corporate and governmental convenience?"

As of April 27, 2012, Microsoft no longer supports CISPA citing any law must allow "us to honor the privacy and security promises we make to our customers." And, as the statement continues, "We look forward to continuing to work with members of Congress, consumer groups, the civil liberties community and industry colleagues as the debate moves to the Senate to ensure the final legislation helps to tackle the real threat of cybercrime while protecting consumer privacy."