CISPA
The US House of Representatives has passed the controversial Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protect Act more commonly referred to as CISPA.CISPA passed overwhelmingly in the house, despite its promise to allow corporations and the government access to your private data, completely unchecked.
It’s no wonder after seeing how much money was poured into lobbying for the invasive bill, and who stands to profit.
Politicians like Mike Rogers and Mike McCaul are trying weak, fear-mongering techniques to explain why the government needs unrestrained access to your private digital information.
So, the NSA can spy on you because of the Boston bombings and because corporations agree?
Activists and Internet users protesting the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act have spun the battle as big business interests versus the privacy of individual citizens.
If lobbying dollars are anything to go by, they’re right: Pro-CISPA businesses and interests have spent 140 times more money on lobbying than anti CISPA interests, according to the Sunlight Foundation.
According to OpenSecrets, 208 different organizations registered to lobby on last year’s version of CISPA, with Verizon, AT&T, Google and Yahoo being the most active. Tech companies, many of which were against the Stop Online Piracy Act (a bill that would have blocked certain websites that contained copyrighted materials), haven’t spoken with their wallets on CISPA.
According to MapLight, tech companies spent some $5.7 million opposing SOPA; on CISPA, they spent just $17,000 (with most of that coming from Craigslist, Mozilla and Reddit employees).
Cenk Uygur and Ana Kasparian breaks down the blatant and direct privacy violations that are on track to happen.
CISPA – Corporations Buy Politicians and Your Privacy
CISPA’s Weak Excuse to Blatantly Violate Your Privacy
