[governance] New Legislation Would Give Power to Keyboard Cops

[Riaz K Tayob]

[The Great Fall of Liberty?]

New Legislation Would Give Power to Keyboard Cops

By Naomi Wolf, The Daily Star

07 May 12



lmost no one had read the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act 
before it was rushed through the United States House of Representatives 
in late April and sent on to the Senate.

CISPA is the successor to SOPA, the "anti-piracy" bill that was recently 
defeated after an outcry from citizens and Internet companies. SOPA, 
which was framed by its proponents in terms of protecting America's 
entertainment industry from theft, would have shackled content providers 
and users, and spawned copycat legislation around the world, from Canada 
and the United Kingdom to Israel and Australia.

Now, with CISPA, the clampdown on Internet freedom comes in the guise of 
a bill aimed at cyber terrorism that should give Internet entrepreneurs 
- and all business leaders - nightmares. And yet, this time, major 
Internet and technology companies, including Facebook and Microsoft, 
supported the bill, on the grounds that it would create a clear 
procedure for handling government requests for information. Microsoft, 
at least, belatedly dropped its support after recognizing that the law 
would allow the U.S. government to force any Internet business to hand 
over information about its users' online activities.

But the bill is far more alarming than that. For example, "the head of a 
department or agency of the Federal Government receiving cyber threat 
information ... shall provide such cyber threat information to the 
National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center of the 
Department of Homeland Security."

In fact, no actual threat need be made. And what counts as "threat 
information" is defined so broadly that it can mean anything. 
"Notwithstanding any other provision of law," the government may rely on 
"cybersecurity systems to identify and obtain cyber threat information."

The vague concept of "cyber threat information" does not just let the 
Department of Homeland Security investigate anyone. By including 
information pertaining to "a vulnerability of a system or network of a 
government or private entity," and the "theft or misappropriation of 
private or government information, intellectual property, or personally 
identifiable information," the bill appears to target whistleblowers and 
leakers, and threatens investigative journalism.

The respected Internet technology site Techdirt has called the bill 
"insanity." It has written that "CISPA can no longer be called a 
cybersecurity bill at all. The government would be able to search 
information ... for the purposes of investigating American citizens with 
complete immunity from all privacy protections as long as [it] can claim 
someone committed a ‘cybersecurity crime.'"

Indeed, the Department of Homeland Security may look through data 
transmitted online without restraint, regardless of what it ultimately 
finds. And, in this respect, business leaders who believe that this bill 
is aimed at terrorists - or "at most" at the domestic activists and 
documentarians who can make it harder for them to operate - should be 
careful about what they wish for.

Indeed, because the definition of cyberterrorism is so broad and 
subjective, U.S. business leaders who are pushing for CISPA risk 
exposing themselves to the Department of Homeland Security's power to 
scrutinize their personal lives, subpoena their bank records, and 
disrupt their electronic communications. And the law would give the 
Department of Homeland Security similar control over the personal and 
financial lives of anyone who does business in the United States or with 
American companies - a power that the U.S. government has already tried 
to assert by issuing a subpoena for Icelandic legislator Birgitta 
Jonsdottir's personal bank records.

Everyone has secrets: love affairs, substance-abuse problems, 
mental-health diagnoses, heterodox sexual preferences or questionable 
discussions with accountants.

In a strong civil society, these personal matters properly remain 
private. In a surveillance society, they become leverage.

I am fearful of the effects of unrestrained domestic surveillance for 
specific reasons: I worked in two U.S. presidential campaigns, and saw 
firsthand the standard tactics - nonviolent but still mafia-inflected - 
of high-level politics. There was no shortage of privately contracted 
surveillance and wiretapping. Campaigns routinely planted spies - 
interns, household staff or even lovers - in the opposing camp, and 
devoted vast numbers of man-hours to combing through private records in 
opposition research. The results were then regularly used behind the 
scenes to bully, intimidate and coerce targets.

Most of these "scandals" never saw the light of day - the goal was 
pressure, not disclosure. CISPA would give the same power to the 
Department of Homeland Security. America's business leaders may think 
that they are immune, but the bill's definition of "a threat" is so 
vague - with no distinction between a "threat" to the Internet and any 
random, even metaphorical "threat" on the Internet - that the Department 
of Homeland Security may keep tabs on anyone who says something that 
irks someone in a cubicle.

If CISPA enters into U.S. law, alongside the recently enacted National 
Defense Authorization Act - which gives the government the power to 
detain any American for anything forever - fundamental civil liberties 
will be threatened in a way that no democracy can tolerate. And because 
so much of the freedom of the Internet around the world derives from the 
freedom of expression that until recently characterized the U.S., 
enactment of CISPA poses a similar threat around the world.

The good news is that President Barack Obama has vowed to veto CISPA. 
The bad news is that he made - and then broke - a similar vow on the 
National Defense Authorization Act.


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