by Cameron Graf ‘13

If you commonly visit, interact with, or have in any way heard of the internet then chances are that you have heard of SOPA, the failed Congressional bill which sought to effectively neuter the internet and all that it stands for in accordance with international copyright law. If such a name rings a bell, then the eerily similar name CISPA, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, should raise a few warning bells, something it wholly deserves to do.

With the intended purpose of allowing the government to investigate online cybernetic threats and ensure American computer network security among other admirable things, CISPA holds the dubious position of being the latest security bill that protects the security of the government and large businesses, while ostracizing common citizens. On a side note, CISPA has already passed the House of Representatives in Congress, and was reintroduced to the Senate this February, though it has yet to pass there, with the most recent action being a failed vote to invoke cloture and end the debate, leaving the final decision still up in the air.

CISPA is just as, if not more, detestable than its older sibling SOPA for a number of reasons. To begin with, CISPA is worded so vaguely that in application it could support a wide array of actions, including but not limited to those which SOPA once sought to enact. To simplify, under the watchful eye of SOPA, if the government wished to request one’s personal information from a private company, then a process would be taken, over the course of more than ten hours, in order to successfully gain access to this information.

Meanwhile, if CISPA were to pass, this process would drop to a time relative to nothing for the following reasons: One, CISPA makes it legal for private companies to take note of any and all personal information stored upon or otherwise exposed to their online branches, and to store it. Two, the government under CISPA is then allowed and even encouraged to request such information from companies for ‘Cybersecurity Purposes.’ The government should be restricted from using this information in other ways such as ‘National Security,” a term undefined and unspecified by the bill.

While such legislation may at first seem nice, the capability for both corruption and manipulation of the vaguely worded, unspecific bill is astounding. While  not the same thing as the equally corruptible Patriot Act, CISPA would allow the government to infringe equally upon the rights of American citizens. No warrant is needed for requesting the information, and no span of time exists in between processes to assure that the government actually needs this information and is serious about obtaining it. All of your personal information will simply be a mouse-click away from nearly every agency in the government. While the phrase “If you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear” may stand here, the fact remains that even if I have nothing illegal to hide, I’d rather not have government workers combing through every bit of my personal information and browsing history, a practice that is just as possible beneath CISPA as is the pursuit of the malignant hackers and terrorists it was designed to stop.