One thing that is important in such a interconnected world, is the rights of social network users. Governments are now plotting to invade personal cyber-space. Internet monitoring seems like something only fit for parents with young children, however this has expanded to a something discussed at home to something discussed at the House of Representatives. What is our government so afraid of?
In January 2012, previous acts that was some form of infringement of people’s rights were protested, Wikipedia page for Pipa describes the opposing web authorities:
Among those who oppose the legislation are the Mozilla Corporation,[35] Facebook,[35] Electronic Frontier Foundation,[36] Yahoo!, eBay, American Express, reddit, Google,[37] Reporters Without Borders, Human Rights Watch,[38] English Wikipedia,[39] Entertainment Consumers Association[40] and Uncyclopedia.[citation needed] Internet entrepreneurs including Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn, Twitter co-founder Evan Williams, and Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley signed a letter to Congress expressing their opposition to the legislation.[41] The Tea Party Patriots have argued that the bill “is bad for consumers”.[42] A letter of opposition was signed by 130 technology entrepreneurs and executives and sent to Congress to express their concern that the law in its present form would “hurt economic growth and chill innovation in legitimate services that help people create, communicate, and make money online”.[43] English-language Wikipedia sites joined other Internet sites in protesting the PIPA and SOPA legislation by staging a “blackout” of service for 24 hours on January 18, 2012. Many websites protested, including: Wikipedia, CNet and Cheezburger network sites. Some websites denied access to their websites altogether.[44] Campaigner Peter Bradwell of the Open Rights Group argues how this act could have a negative influence among other countries who are also considering this bill. “These two bills are too broad and so badly worded that perfectly lawful sites could be censored. One reason we’re joining these protests is that we face very similar issues in UK copyright-enforcement policies. Highlighting these flaws should help UK policymakers avoid making the same mistakes.”[45]
So why is this an issues for today?
Well although the proposals for the SOPA and PIPA acts failed, CISPA has not.
What is CISPA, you may ask? Well according to Wikipedia:
The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) is a proposed law in the United States which would allow for the sharing of Internet traffic information between the U.S. government and technology and manufacturing companies. The stated aim of the bill is to help the U.S government investigate cyber threats and ensure the security of networks against cyber-attacks.[1]
Also recent developments on CISPA:
| House vote on April 18, 2013 passing CISPA | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Affiliation | Yes votes | No votes | Did not vote |
| Democratic | 92 | 98 | 11 |
| Republican | 196 | 29 | 6 |
| Total | 288 | 127 | 17 |
Updates:
ACLU: CISPA Is Dead (For Now)
This is not something that will rest as I can see. There just another bill waiting for it’s chance to invade the rights of others and of course all the wrong people will benefit from such a law and of course all the innocent and some not so innocent will persecuted for it. I’m not sure what is entirely the solution, whether the governments want to stop terrorists acts before they occur, but if you stop hurting others, I don’t people will have that excuse to hurt you. America get your shit together and liberate the poor!