Tech Giant Warns CISPA Is “Alarming” Threat to Privacy

Mozilla is first Silicon Valley entity to denounce bill

Paul Joseph Watson

Prison Planet.com

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Tech giant Mozilla has publicly slammed the Cyber
Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) which passed the House
last week, labeling the legislation an “alarming” threat to privacy.

“While we wholeheartedly support a more secure Internet,
CISPA has a broad and alarming reach that goes far beyond Internet
security. The bill infringes on our privacy, includes vague definitions
of cybersecurity, and grants immunities to companies and government that
are too broad around information misuse. We hope the Senate takes the
time to fully and openly consider these issues with stakeholder input
before moving forward with this legislation,” Mozilla, which is best
known for its Firefox browser, said in a statement.

The statement is important because it marks the first
time any Silicon Valley entity has denounced CISPA, with an array of
powerful companies lining up in support of the legislation which passed
the US House of Representatives 248 to 168 and now heads to the Senate.

Facebook, Microsoft, IBM, Intel, Oracle, Symantec,
AT&T; and Verizon have all backed the bill, with Microsoft
re-affirming its support yesterday after rumors the company was getting
cold feet, while Google has refused to take either side.

CISPA has been identified by many as
a greater threat to privacy than SOPA, which was opposed by a deluge of
major tech firms after a viral online opposition campaign, but because
CISPA has received less attention, corporate giants have found it easier
to stay mute.

Not only would CISPA mandate ISPs to share Internet data of users with government “notwithstanding any other provision of law,” it also empowers the Department of Homeland Security to monitor the communications of the federal courts and Congress, and intercept tax returns sent to the IRS.

The bill “gives companies a free pass to monitor and
collect communications and share that data with the government and other
companies, so long as they do so for ‘cybersecurity purposes,’” the
Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has noted. “Just invoking
‘cybersecurity threats’ is enough to grant companies immunity from
nearly all civil and criminal liability, effectively creating an
exemption from all existing law.”

“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,” writes TechDirt’s Leigh Beadon.

As we have documented,
the Obama administration’s threat to veto the bill is little more than a
crude stunt and carries no more weight than Obama’s promise to veto the
National Defense Authorization Act, which he signed on New Year’s Eve
after the White House itself lobbied for the NDAA’s most egregious
provisions to be included.

Indeed, the White House’s primary beef with the legislation appears to be the fact that it doesn’t hand enough power to the Department of Homeland Security.

CISPA now moves to the Senate where it will be
amalgamated with one of two other bills before heading to Obama’s desk.
Don’t hold your breath on that veto.