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Expert: New CISPA Bill Isn't SOPA, But Still Attacks Constitutional Rights

A new bill making its way through Congress could allow the government to snoop on private data

April 12, 2012 RSS Feed Print

For its part, it's no secret the government wants more leeway to get information about users. A February story by The Washington Post revealed that the National Security Administration has lobbied the White House for "unprecedented government monitoring of routine civilian Internet activity," but were rebuffed because of privacy concerns.

Rogers said that the data shared between companies and the government is unlikely to be "content driven" and that "it's really zeros and ones" being shared—not personal E-mails or Facebook messages. But concerned Internet users say the bill needs to be more defined. The Congressmen sponsoring the bill champion the fact that it's just 13 pages long, but its clauses have plenty of interpretations.

"Congress should take steps to improve cyber security defenses, but it has to realize it has to be more careful and cautious," Dempsey says. "People really do care deeply about not having the government control the Internet, and the government intrusion into the technology is really the overarching issue."

Tags:
net neutrality,
Congress,
internet

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im moving out of the country if this passes, you guys can deal with it

not in america WHOO! of SD 2:12PM April 27, 2012

@allen

Unfortunately, it's never really been about fooling us, but about wearing us down and spreading us thin. They know how much effort it takes to muster the mountain of public support it requires to counter even just one instance of utterly ridiculous legislation, let alone many.

Already I can see that the opposition to CISPA is far, far less vocal then its predecessor. Just take a look on slashdot, In comparison to the anti SOPA campaign, this legislation widens few eyes.

I hope I'm wrong!

nick of AK 4:56PM April 15, 2012

The real problem with laws like these is that they ultimately become tools of political repression. It becomes too easy to demand information on political activists or others using their freedom of speech to voice their political descent. One needs to look no further than the story of Yahoo giving the real name of Chinese journalist & Yahoo Mail user Shi Tao to the Chinese Government to see how wrong headed the law is. As with this new law in congress, no warrant or subpoena was necessary. This married with children man was sent away for ten years and it ruined his life. Read "Consent of the Networked" for more horrifying stories related to this. Then call your representative and tell them to VOTE NO!

Fake Namesis of DC 10:38AM April 14, 2012

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