HR 3523, known as the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) is just one of a number of cybersecurity bills recently introduced to Congress. Rather than focusing on copyright enforcement as do SOPA and ACTA, CISPA is all about information gathering for the Department of Defense.
The bill, slated to pass soon with over 100 sponsors, allows the government to ask ISPs for collected user information in the name of “cybersecurity”. The broad wording of this bill has many worried about domestic spying (by the NSA) and an erosion of the right to privacy.
And what comes through loud and clear is that the Rogers-Ruppersberger CISPA bill will allow for much greater information sharing of companies sending private communication data to the government — including the NSA, who has been trying very, very hard to get this data, not for cybersecurity reasons, but to spy on people. CISPA has broad definitions, very few limits on who can get the data, almost no limitations on how the government can use the data (i.e. they can use it to monitor, not just for cybersecurity reasons) and (of course) no real oversight at all for how the data is (ab)used.
Techdirt has the lowdown.
RT briefly describes the bill, and provides some commentary from Kendall Burman, senior national security fellow for the Center for Democracy and Technology:
Cyclosapien 