CISPA passes U.S. House

Following protests by privacy advocates and organizations and a web “blackout” in January by a number of tech companies (was well as support for the protests by such “big names” as Google, Yahoo!, Facebook, Twitter, Mozilla, Wikipedia, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the ACLU), The Stop Online Privacy Act (SOPA) was defeated in the U.S. Congress. It happened despite the legislation’s backing by powerful media organizations such as RIAA and the MPAA.

Now a new bill has passed the U.S. House that looks to many to be even more dangerous. It’s the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA)and it permits Internet companies to hand over confidential customer records and communications to the U.S. government. And the language in the bill makes it override all existing state and federal privacy laws.

Unlike SOPA, however, this bill has the support of Facebook, Microsoft, Oracle, Verizon, AT&T, Intel and other tech giants. Now it goes to the Senate. Read more about it here:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57422567-281/house-approves-cispa-despite-last-minute-push-by-opponents/?tag=mncol;txt 

The good news: an amendment proposed by Democratic Representative Sheila Jackson Lee that would have given the Homeland Security department authority to intercept web and email communications was withdrawn before the passage of the bill:

http://news.cnet.com/8301-31921_3-57422481-281/homeland-security-internet-monitoring-dropped-from-cispa/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-20

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