The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, CISPA, passed the House vote and has now made its way into the Senate. The U.S House of Representative approved CISPA and in doing so went against augmenting vocal arguments from critics that it would do more to endanger Americans’ privacy than assist in cyber security. A vote of 248 to 168, a bipartisan majority agreed to CISPA which would officially allow internet companies to give in their confidential customer records and communications to the National Security Agency and other parts of the United States Government.
The bill that actually put forward the idea of giving more surveillance powers to the NSA and Homeland Security didn’t quite make it through this bill is to give new methods of information sharing between companies and government agencies. The part about restricted control and privacy preservation is especially highlighted when talking about CISPA.
Regardless of the aforementioned keywords, CISPA is a vague bill with no such restrictions as to how much information the government would take and how much it actually needs. When talking about technology, complete control is given for instance by spyware given by companies like Mobile Spy or Mobistealth. These if installed allow the installer to monitor all the activities done on or through the phone. An intense invasion of privacy, this sort of surveillance will not be openly welcome at the national level.
Now that the bill has passed house, it will meet two different methods and visions on how to address the cyberthreat issue.
One aspect is a voluntary cybersecurity outlook propped by Senator John McCain of Arizona and supported by seven Republican senators and many business groups. The other is a bill cosponsored by Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut and Susan Collins of Maine which is backed by the Obama administration. This would need crucial infrastructure companies like electric utilities to meet the federal cybersecurity standards.
Senator Lieberman alerted that the cyberthreat at present is a big threat to this country and it is now time to act. With the nation spending three years on cybersecurity, they shouldn’t let the moment slip away from them. He said that to defend America’s cyberspace as an issue of national and economic safety, it is urgent to act now.
The Cybersecurity masterminds are in favor the Lieberman-Collins bill apart from the loopholes. There are risky loopholes present in the law put forward. First leaving the information-technology industry and Internet service providers with no supervision at all and also establishing a limit for federal supervision way too high. The companies that do have to meet federal standards under Lieberman –Collins are those that if their functioning or operations are mismanaged would lead to chaos. Chaos could mean huge impact to the economy, national security or daily life or it could also been mass death.
According to James Lewis, director of the Technology and Public Policy Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington stated that most of the important computer networks would still not be protected and thus would be open to attack by cyber warriors. He stated that it is better to come out with no bill instead of a bad bill.
Talking about the privacy advocates, they have gone against both the McCain and Lieberman-Collins legislation. Lieberman-Collins still had some privacy restrictions such as that it would demand companies to anonymize the information they deliver to the government and use the information received back from the government only for cybersecurity. That affirmation is still however not enough to satisfy the Center for Democracy and Technology. Seeing how there is so much debate, it would surprise to see if the Congress can pass any cybersecurity legislation at all.
Author Bio: Stella Rabecca has been in the business of providing quality information on Mobile Phone Monitoring. Her main expertise lies within the spectrum of Blackberry Tracking software which are making waves in the technology world today..