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CISPA legislation seen by many as SOPA 2.0

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The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011 is working its way through Congress, and is the latest proposed legislation to raise concerns among privacy activists. Introduced in November by Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.), the stated goal of CISPA is to create new channels for communication between government intelligence entities and private firms regarding potential and emerging cyber-security threats.

The communication would deal primarily with what the legislation deems “cyber threat intelligence,” which it defines as “information in the possession of an element of the intelligence community directly pertaining to a vulnerability of, or threat to, a system or a network of a government or private entity.”

The threats listed under the umbrella of cyber-threat intelligence include “efforts to degrade, disrupt or destroy” systems or networks, as well as “theft or misappropriation of private or government information, intellectual property or personally identifiable information.”

It’s the inclusion of intellectual property that’s a major point of contention for those looking at the bill’s broad language with a skeptical gaze. Many fear that CISPA is essentially a retooled version of SOPA, which was taken off the table in Congress after a concentrated effort by Internet giants such as Google, Wikipedia and Reddit, which either supported or held blackouts in protest of the bill.

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"... The language is so vague that an ISP could use it to monitor communications of subscribers for potential infringement of intellectual property. An ISP could even interpret this bill as allowing them to block accounts believed to be infringing, block access to websites like The Pirate Bay believed to carry infringing content, or take other measures provided they claimed it was motivated by cybersecurity concerns.”

Its supporters paint CISPA in another light, framing it as an essential national security safeguard and a shield against the continued targeting of U.S. businesses by “nation-state actors like China,” according to Rogers.

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CISPA has the support of organizations that include AT&T, Facebook, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Symantec, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Verizon, with Facebook sending over a particularly supportive letter of endorsement.

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The process by which CISPA facilitates information sharing revolves around the director of National Security, who would appoint members of the intelligence community as gatekeepers to weed through employees of firms seeking to link up with the government and grant security clearances as they see fit. The bill also would give the intelligence employee discretion to speed up the process.

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And it’s within this sharing that the key difference between SOPA and CISPA lies. SOPA was focused on establishing punitive measures, mainly through revoking domains found to be hosting copyrighted content, which in turn would make Google responsible for every music video or movie clip posted to YouTube without the expressed consent of copyright holders. CISPA, on the other hand, is focused on information being made readily available between approved entities and the government.

That distinction may explain the support of Facebook, which was one of the many technology firms opposed to SOPA. CISPA includes an exemption of liability granted to those firms taking part in CISPA’s information exchanges -- possibly freeing tech firms from the responsibility of regulating users and the danger of being taken offline for alleged copyright violations -- so long as they get approval from the government, actively divulge cyber-threat intelligence concerns and are “acting in good faith.”

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Originally posted by inimalist
This wont be the end of the MPAA and RIAA's attempts to pass this legislation, and when the issue is finally tied to national security and chinese hackers it will go through

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If this sounds a bit familiar, it should. A similar coalition mounted an attempt to defeat CISPA last year. It failed: despite a presidential veto threat and criticism from Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colo.) and Ron Paul (R-Tex.), the House of Representatives approved the measure by a largely party line vote of 248 to 168. The bill did not, however, receive a vote in the Senate.

Undaunted, Rep. Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican and influential chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, reintroduced CISPA (H.R. 624) last month along with Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger, a Maryland Democrat. It's supported by AT&T, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Verizon, Intel, IBM, Comcast, and industry trade associations, according to letters of support posted on the committee's Web site.

Rogers' statement (PDF) in defense of CISPA says his legislation is necessary to head off cyberattacks from China and other sources:

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This important legislation enables cyberthreat sharing within the private sector and, on a purely voluntary basis, with the government, all while providing strong protections for privacy and civil liberties. Voluntary information sharing with the federal government helps improve the government's ability to protect against foreign cyberthreats and gives our intelligence agencies tips and leads to help them find advanced foreign cyberhackers overseas. This in turn allows the government to provide better cyberthreat intelligence back to the private sector to help it protect itself.

One reason CISPA would be useful for government agencies hoping to conduct additional surveillance is that, under existing federal law, any person or company who helps someone "intercept any wire, oral, or electronic communication" -- unless specifically authorized by law -- could face criminal charges. CISPA would overrule those privacy protections.

Technology trade associations, and a few tech companies, are backing CISPA not because they necessarily adore it, but because they view it as preferable to a Democrat-backed bill that's more regulatory.

But last year's Democratic bill, backed by then-Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.), had privacy problems of its own. Civil liberties groups including the Electronic Frontier Foundation opposed Lieberman's bill, warning last year that it would have given "companies new rights to monitor our private communications and pass that data to the government."

After the Senate failed to approve either CISPA or Lieberman's bill, Obama responded last month by signing a cybersecurity executive order. It doesn't rewrite privacy laws, and instead expands "real time sharing of cyberthreat information" to companies that operate critical infrastructure, asks NIST to devise cybersecurity standards, and proposes a "review of existing cybersecurity regulation."