The Naked Party

The Cyber Intelligence Security and Protection Act, better known as CISPA, is headed to the House floor this week amid a flurry of amendments and controversy.

When the bill first gained notoriety, it was compared to the much-hated Stop Online Piracy Act, or SOPA.

But there’s a key difference. While SOPA was labeled as a threat to free speech, CISPA has been criticized as a threat to online privacy — and that’s why it’s well on its way to passing without attracting mainstream attention.

Americans will voraciously defend their right to free speech. But they’ve acquiesced to the slow erosion of their right to privacy. Witness both the passing of the PATRIOT Act in the wake of September 11th, 2001, and the rise of the social web.

In short CISPA would allow companies to spy on Internet users and collect and share this data with third-party companies or Government agencies. As long as the company states that these privacy violations are needed to protect against “cybersecurity” threats, they are immune from civil and criminal liabilities.

Some have described the bill as a new SOPA, but it’s nothing like it. Where SOPA was focused on the shutting down of copyright infringing websites, CISPA is directly targeted at individual Internet subscribers, including copyright infringers.

Meet ACTA, The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement. ACTA is supposed to strengthen intellectual property rights; that is, the rights of artists to protect their creations from being copied and counterfeited, essentially stolen and reproduced without consent. However, many including Congressman Darrel Issa (via his website on this subject) has called ACTA “an unconstitutional power grab started by President George W. Bush and completed by President Barack Obama – despite the White House’s January 14 criticism of legislative solutions that harm the Internet and erode individual rights.”

It’s time that Americans stand up to a government that is taking our freedoms away….

“Here is the transcript of the Anonymous message:

We are not calling upon the collective to deface or use a distributed denial of service attack on a United States government agency website or affiliate. We are not calling upon the people to occupy a city or protest in front of a local building. This has not brought on us any legislative change or alternate law. It has only brought us bloodshed and false criticism. For the last 12 years, voting was useless. Corporations and lobbyists are the true leaders of this country and are the ones with the power to control our lives. To rebuild our government, we must first destroy it.

Our time for democracy is here.
Our time for real change is here.
This is America’s time, to have its own revolution.”

“After the shelving of SOPA and PIPA back in January Reid stated,“There is no reason that the legitimate issues raised by many about this bill cannot be resolved.”

Following a massive attack waged Thursday on several government and entertainment industry websites, hacktivists with Anonymous continued their assault over the weekend, momentarily taking CBS.com offline.

The next target very well might be Facebook.

It’s not only SOPA amd PIPA that we should be concerned with…..

House and Senate leaders abandoned plans to move on SOPA and PIPA on Friday — the surest sign yet that a wave of online protests have killed the controversial anti-piracy legislation for now and maybe forever.

SOPA sponsor Lamar Smith, the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said his committee won’t take up the bill as planned next month — and that he’d have to “wait until there is wider agreement on a solution” before moving forward.