Dear Kevin,
On April 26, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed CISPA – the Cybersecurity Information Sharing and Protection Act – by a vote of 248-168. CISPA now goes to the Senate.
CISPA gives the government, including military spy agencies like the National Security Agency (NSA), virtually unlimited powers to capture our personal information — medical records, private emails, financial information — all without a warrant or proper oversight.
Tell Your Senators: Stop CISPA
Civil liberties groups and progressives unanimously opposed the bill, as did Ron Paul. President Obama warned the House that he will veto the bill because it does not protect our privacy, but they ignored his warnings.
Tell your Senators to protect your privacy from Big Brother and oppose CISPA.
Thanks for all you do!
Bob Fertik
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Background
On April 26, the Republican-controlled House of Representatives passed CISPA – the Cybersecurity Information Sharing and Protection Act, H.R. 3523 – by a vote of 248-168. CISPA now goes to the Senate.
CISPA gives the government, including military spy agencies like the National Security Agency (NSA), virtually unlimited powers to capture our personal information — medical records, private emails, financial information — all without a warrant or proper oversight.
Civil liberties groups and progressives unanimously opposed the bill, as did Ron Paul. President Obama warned the House that he will veto the bill because it does not protect our privacy, but they ignored his warnings.
Tell your Senators to protect your privacy from Big Brother and oppose CISPA.
Petition
I urge you to oppose CISPA cybersecurity bill (H.R. 3523). CISPA would trample on decades of privacy law, allowing companies to spy on our online communications and pass all kinds of sensitive data to the government.
That information could end up in the hands of the National Security Agency (NSA), which is notorious for its lack of public accountability. And that data could also be used for purposes completely unrelated to cybersecurity. As one expert wrote, last-minute amendments made the bill far worse:
CISPA can no longer be called a cybersecurity bill at all. The government would be able to search information it collects under CISPA for the purposes of investigating American citizens with complete immunity from all privacy protections as long as they can claim someone committed a “cybersecurity crime”. Basically it says the 4th Amendment does not apply online, at all. Moreover, the government could do whatever it wants with the data as long as it can claim that someone was in danger of bodily harm, or that children were somehow threatened—again, notwithstanding absolutely any other law that would normally limit the government’s power.
Civil liberties groups unanimously opposed the bill, as did Ron Paul and Tea Party groups. President Obama warned the House that he will veto the bill because it does not protect our privacy, but they ignored his warnings.
I urge you to defend my civil liberties under the First and Fourth Amendments and oppose CISPA.
Dear Kevin,
Outrageous! Yesterday the House rushed through a vote on CISPA — the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act.
CISPA supporters in the House seemed so rattled by mounting opposition to their creepy bill — more than 1 million people told them to ditch it — that they passed the legislation before our outcry could spread even further.
With the growing momentum against it, CISPA may not have survived another day on the Hill. Even with a hurried vote, 168 members voted “no,” and formerly staunch supporters were starting to respond to the public opposition and defect.
As the focus now moves to the Senate, it’s our job to stop anything that looks like CISPA from moving forward.
Donate $10 today to help stop cyberspying bills in the Senate.
Here’s what the next few months will look like:
The fight moves to the Senate. The Senate will soon take up its own cybersecurity legislation. We will need to shut down any bill that compromises our civil liberties and threatens our right to communicate online.
We keep the pressure on the White House. President Obama has already pledged to veto any bill with CISPA-like threats to our privacy. We must hold his administration accountable in case a version of CISPA makes it to his desk.
We’ll need all hands on deck to stop this relentless push to enact a regime of online spying.
Thanks,
Josh, Tim, Kate and the rest of the Free Press Action Fund team
P.S. To paraphrase Ben Franklin, he who sacrifices online freedom for cybersecurity deserves neither. Chip in $10 to help us stop this bill for good.
Free Press is a national, nonpartisan organization working to reform the media. Learn more at http://www.freepress.net.