President Obama has threatened a veto of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, saying it inappropriately rolls back some privacy protections for citizens. As it stands now this legislation, co-sponsored by Maryland’s own Congressman Dutch Ruppersberger, proposes to increase sharing of cyber security information between government and major corporations in this country.
A particular flaw we flag is the relief from liability it would give to companies for their disclosure of citizen information to the government – in effect making companies you do business with snitches to the government, and as a practical matter giving them every incentive to turn over the most data they can. CISPA should be abandoned entirely as beyond salvage in any constitutional republic that even pretends to care about citizen rights.