Stop CISPA, Save the Internet

Remember the explosion of outrage when SOPA came and went earlier this year? Remember the explosion of outrage when SOPA came and went earlier this year? CISPA is like SOPA’s creepy inbred cousin, and no one seems to know what the heck it is. Americans, allow me to shed my veneer of hack humor for a few moments and explain a few things. CISPA, SOPA, and bills like them are an effort to erode your privacy and freedom. CISPA stands for Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, and on the surface, it “ensures the security of networks against attacks and enforce copyright and patents.” What it actually does is allow the government and companies to read your blog posts, social network messages, and, say, personal freaking emails – and then they can do whatever they want with that information. David Seaman Online has a better (video) explanation of what this bill is, and why you should be hurling angry emails at your representatives, not sitting here reading Style Quirk. Wikipedia reports that recent revisions to CISPA have “limited its scope to a narrower definition of cyber-threats ... ‘theft of intellectual property’ refers to the theft of research and development.” Hey, you may think, I don’t post cyber-threats. This has nothing to do with me. They can read my emails if they want; I’m boring. Hey, I’m pretty boring too, but I still don’t want some jerk reading my personal emails. Let me drive this home: Your private information will be in the hands of people you don’t know. They can access all your online activity. ALL YOUR ONLINE ACTIVITY. They can do what they want with this information. There isn’t a real definition of what a threat is or isn’t. Thus, if some humorless government wretch reads your silly email about setting the internet on fire and doesn’t understand that you always joke about setting things on fire, he can say “Holy crap! We have a cyber-threat!” and you can think about CISPA while you’re rotting away in jail somewhere. Meanwhile, the people with access to your information have complete immunity. Oh, and for those of us who think those agencies with access to this information are completely reasonable and will never do anything immoral with it...remember those British tourists who got arrested for expressing their excitement on Twitter? Yeah, I know. Oops. You really want those folks reading your IMs? Big Brother is on his way. This bill does have a long way to go before it’s passed, but the point is we need to stand up and do something about it now, before it moves any further. Here’s the full text of the bill, for those who want to read more about this madness. And here’s what Reddit has to say about it, along with a list of people to call/write to in order to protest. Do your part.