Demand Progress Demands End to CISPA

Activist group Demand Progress is continuing its fight
against a cybersecurity information sharing billre-introduced last week and backed by cable ops and other ISPs.

The group said Thursday that over 90,000 members had
expressed their displeasure with CISPA (the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and
Protection Act) introduced last week by Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.).

Rogers introduced the same bill last year, after which
Demand Progress members -- over 200,000 the group says -- called or emailed
their legislators to complain. That complaint is that the bill preempts all
online privacy laws by allowing for the sharing of cybersecurity threat
information between industry and government without a warrant and with
liability protections for industry.

The group even invoked its late founder, Aaron Swartz, who
dubbed CISPA the "Patriot Act of the Internet."

CISPA passed the House 248-168 last April before running
into a Senate controlled by Democrats favoring a bill with cybersecurity
guidelines Republicans feared would morph into mandates.

The president two weeks ago mandated that voluntary
guidelines be created, but the language was general enough that it drew little
pushback from industry.

John Eggerton

Contributing editor John Eggerton has been an editor and/or writer on media regulation, legislation and policy for over four decades, including covering the FCC, FTC, Congress, the major media trade associations, and the federal courts. In addition to Multichannel News and Broadcasting + Cable, his work has appeared in Radio World, TV Technology, TV Fax, This Week in Consumer Electronics, Variety and the Encyclopedia Britannica.