CISPA blackout takes effect, but makes a much smaller fuss than SOPA protest

Despite calls by Anonymous for a an online blackout in protest of CISPA, it seems that many are still in the dark about what the U.S. cyber-security bill is exactly about, and why they should care.

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) is a bill being reintroduced in the U.S. House of Representatives that would allow private companies to voluntarily share information with the government in the event a cyber attack is suspected, PC World explains. Its aim is to better protect companies and private citizens from cyber attacks, particularly in light of recent attacks reported to originate from China.

Those who are against CISPA say that it would allow companies to disregard the privacy agreements they hold with their customers and clients (specifically that part that says “we won’t share your information with any third parties”) and information isn’t guaranteed to be protected during transmission. An amendment to the bill would require data to be anonymized when transmitted from the government to private companies, but doesn’t require those companies to do the same when transmitting to the government.

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‘Hacktivist’ group Anonymous sought to protest the bill, and encouraged websites to go dark on April 22 to show they were against it, too. Over 200 websites joined Anonymous in solidarity, which is certainly impressive, but the protest didn’t have nearly the same gravity, visibility or impact of previous, similar protests.

Last year, dozens, possibly hundreds of websites went dark in January to protest SOPA and PIPA legislation that was, at the time, being debated in the House and Senate. Unlike this year’s online demonstration, major names in the online world took a stance against SOPA, including Wikipedia, Google, Reddit, Craigslist and Boing Boing to name a few. Following those protests, SOPA was shelved until a consensus could be reached on the parameters of the Congressional bills. While the original intent was to target online piracy, many tech companies and private citizens feared that it would limit the free expression of individuals and sharing of content online that would undermine what makes the Internet great in the first place. As a result, SOPA is yet to be revisited.

But CISPA’s limitation of rights online is slightly different, which is likely why it hasn’t garnered the same widespread backlash that SOPA did. For starters, many major companies are actually in support of the bill this time around. Slash Gear reports Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! are all supporters of the bill, since it’ll protect their bottom line. Reddit joined in the protest, but even then, not all areas of the site went dark. Cyber attacks are costly for tech companies, so having some legal protection against them would be a positive change.

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The other major difference is The White House is already hesitant to move the bill forward. It’s agreeing with CISPA’s opponents that while the changes to the bill have been a step in the right direction, it still overreaches the privacy agreements that companies establish with their users when they sign up for a service. Until there can be a guarantee that companies aren’t passing along any personally identifiable information, there’s a very good chance President Obama won’t sign off on it.

As for the bill’s future, it’s currently up in the air; The Associated Press reports that the Senate is too busy to work through CISPA at the moment, especially in light of the number of changes that will likely have to be made. And considering the Senate already shot down CISPA last year, they likely aren’t in any rush to have the arguments over again.

(Associated Press Photo)

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