Doc Searls Weblog

Last week, while most of us were busy watching the Boston Marathon bombing events unfold, an icky bill called CISPA, or HR264, was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, with enormous lobbying help from IBM and other industrial giants. There are lots of angles on why CISPA is a Bad Thing (see the link pile below for a small sample); but I like the way Joe Andrieu puts it best. He says CISPA “explicitly allows companies to ignore their privacy agreements in the name of cybersecurity,” adding,

This is Regulatory capture of the worst kind. Please get the word out. Fight this thing.

If we can’t even depend on the blatantly one-sided Terms of Service and Privacy Policies of our service providers, entire fields of solutions evaporate.  Efforts to improve, fix, clarify, negotiate or automate the privacy and service agreements will be essentially worthless if Congress is willing to give corporations a free pass.

“Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a self-protected entity may, for cybersecurity purposes … share such cyber threat information with any other entity, including the Federal Government.”

Enshrining corporate protections like this in law isn’t just a privacy problem. It undermines the very notion of contract as a mechanism for constructing agreements in a free society. This is unaccepatble.

Fight CISPA. Call your senator. Call the white house. Blog it. Tweet it. Repost this. Tell everyone. 

The EFF is on the case. To take their lead, start here.

Bonus link pile:

• The fine print of privacy, by Linzi Oliver on the SpiderOak blog
• Silicon Valley companies quietly try to kill Internet privacy bill
• CISPA vote means companies can’t promise to protect privacy
• What is CISPA and Why Is It So Bad for the Internet? (technorms.com)
• The dangers of CISPA (net-security.org)
• CISPA – Corporations Buy Politicians and Your Privacy (scmlmag.com)
• 34 Civil Liberties Organizations Oppose CISPA | Electronic Frontier Foundation (twaddle.newsvine.com)
• EFF: Congress Shamefully Passes CISPA; Stop US Senate (onthewilderside.com)
• Privacy Threat CISPA Passes in the House, Now Faces Senate (1800politics.com)
• The CISPA circus: Send in the clowns: Watching a clueless Congress attempting to pass a cyber security bill would be entertaining if the stakes weren’t so high, by Robert X. Cringeley
• The Losers Who Want C.I.S.P.A Are Cheaters Who Can’t Win Playing by the Rules. (thelonestarwatchdog.com)
• Libertarian Party: Kill CISPA and repeal Patriot Act, NDAA (txwclp.org)