By: Malachi Cane

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or CISPA, was passed by the House of Representatives April 26, 2012. To understand the amount of damage that this bill can bring to the common citizen, one must first understand what the bill entails.

Called “the son of SOPA” by its critics, CISPA was designed to provide a safer Internet to its users; however, the approach that the government has taken to attain this goal is costing its users their privacy. It is of no surprise that the government is willing to take this approach, considering that they have tried to do this in the past with PIPA and SOPA.

Detailing CISPA can be complicated to an extent. The bill essentially emulates the infamous Patriot Act, which allows the search and seizure of anybody or anything if the government/state agency believes that said individual means to act with malcontent. However, instead of going after physical information and/or evidence, they are going after Cyber information which could lead them to a possible spy or hacker. Most people would agree with the fact that going after hackers or spies is actually a positive objective; however, in order for the government to effectively achieve this objective it must look through all logs that the Internet Service Provider, or ISP, keeps of any person’s Internet Protocol or IP address.

Major problems are created by the approach of the bill which gives the complete immunity to ISPs from privacy lawsuits so that they may give all the information they have obtained to any government/state agency. ISPs are also granted anti-trust protection to immunize them against allegations of interaction on cybersecurity issues; additionally, the bill quotes that ISPs are also allowed to provide information if they see threat to, the phrase we all love, “national security.”

I don’t like the government, federal or state, watching every move I make. I feel like it takes away the freedom we as Americans were granted by our Constitution. Under our current judicial system we hear that you are always “innocent until proven guilty;” however I feel that if this bill passes and becomes law, the term will switch to “guilty until proven innocent,” like out of some horrible Russian dystopia, and that is something that I will not stand for.

But there is a fight being waged. And we are not alone in the fight. Companies such as Microsoft, Facebook, AT&T, Verizon, and Oracle are all against this bill; foundations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and the American Civil Liberties Union are against the bill as well. And President Obama has stated he will veto the bill because of its lack of civil liberty provisions and safeguards. But that does not mean we should not keep vigilant. Despite our victory with PIPA and SOPA, CISPA still breathes and is still a threat to our security not only on cyberspace but everywhere. National security is always just one click away from being eradicated, and legislation like CISPA proves so.

So let us take to the streets and make the government hear us yet again, let us protest the injustice that is this bill, and let us make sure that unnecessary power is not given to those who do not know how to use it. I’ll leave you with one of my favorite quotes from one of our greater presidents…

“Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable – a most sacred right – a right, which we hope and believe, is to liberate the world.” – Abraham Lincoln