Aaron Swartz Can’t Fight the New Cybersecurity Bill, So We Must Do It

[marmar]

from truthdig:


Aaron Swartz Can’t Fight the New Cybersecurity Bill, So We Must Do It

Posted on Jul 13, 2014
By Thor Benson

In late 2011 and early 2012, activists, progressive politicians and Internet companies led in part by Internet freedom advocate Aaron Swartz came together to defeat the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA). Advertised as measures against copyright infringement, the bills would have opened any website that contained copyrighted material it was not authorized to publish on any of its pages to a forced shutdown. A site that unknowingly held a copyrighted image in a comment section, for instance, would have been eligible as a violator. Virtually everyone was susceptible to closure.

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) followed SOPA and PIPA in April 2012. CISPA was worse than its predecessors, proposing that private companies be allowed to share user information, a provision that would have violated many privacy protections of the Internet. Recognizing this, Swartz fought again. “It sort of lets the government run roughshod over privacy protections and share personal data about you,” he said of the bill at the time. Again, he prevailed.

Now, a year and a half after Swartz killed himself, there is the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act. CISA is a lot like CISPA, but could end up being even worse. Privacy and civil rights groups including the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation are standing up to fight it. In an article about the bill, the ACLU’s Sandra Fulton wrote: CISA “poses serious threats to our privacy, gives the government extraordinary powers to silence potential whistleblowers, and exempts these dangerous new powers from transparency laws.” The bill has been approved by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and will move to the Senate soon.

Gabe Rottman, a legislative counsel and policy adviser for the ACLU, spoke with Truthdig about CISA. He said the legislation resembles not only CISPA, but the proposed Cybersecurity Act of 2012, which according to him would have been a better bill for protecting privacy and preventing government overreach. “It represented a compromise between the privacy community, industry and the folks pushing cybersecurity on the Hill,” he said of the 2012 legislation. That bill did not pass. CISA borrows some of its elements and removes its privacy and civil rights protections. ...................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/aaron_swartz_cant_fight_the_new_cybersecurity_bill_so_we_must_20140713

[msongs]

1. surely our freedom and transparency loving president will veto this bill. nt

[pscot]

2. surely you're joking