For over two years, cybersecurity and surveillance have been hot button issues. In the midst of all the debates and controversy, US Senators introduce the Cybersercurity Information Sharing Act.
For privacy advocates, this act is nothing good. What is does is protect government surveillance activities and programs and make it look like they’re protecting our right to privacy. Despite outcry over it’s most controversial aspects, and pleas to change them, the US Senate didn’t listen. They voted 74-21 in favor of the old CISA. CISA is supposed to allow companies to share cyber threats with Dept. of Homeland Security, FBI, NSA and other federal agencies. It’s believed we can thank the landslide Senate vote to major hacks over the last year or two, like Target and Sony Pictures. So what’s the problem? According to civil libertarians and privacy rights groups, CISA allows companies to spy on their customers and report any misinterpreted posts, comment, or joke to the federal authorities, no matter how innocent the post may be. Privacy advocates criticized how vague CISA’s definition of ‘cybersecurity threat’ is. As it turns out, the majority of Silicon Valley is against CISA, citing the same concerns. But supporters of CISA say company information sharing is voluntary and peoples’ personal information must be left out of it. Of course, this is according to Senate Intelligence Committee chair Richard Burr.
I already find something wrong with this. Senator Burr said peoples’ personal information must be left out. What if that person really is a dangerous threat to society? How are you going to bring them to justice if you don’t know who they are? That’s a warning sign. And what’s up with this superficial definition of cybersecurity? Could that really mean a terrorist threat or hacker threat? ?Or could that mean anything that could be ‘offensive’ or ‘obscene’ could be subject to federal scrutiny? How far can this go?