Who is cispa

Before the vote, some House Representatives proposed amendments aimed at strengthening privacy protections in the bill, though they were rejected. There are two main differences : SOPA and PIPA primarily targeted foreign websites that allegedly commit copyright and intellectual property infringements.

Attorney General to shutdown offending websites. Click here for a full list. Reddit and other big Internet companies like Mozilla are opposed to the bill as well. Reddit cofounder and Internet freedom activist Alexis Ohanian is campaigning to garner support for his cause.

Information for "national security" purposes: One amendment means the US government can only use data collected under CISPA for "cybersecurity purposes", and not used for "national security" purposes — a catch-all term that can and has been used to skirt Fourth Amendment rights.

The second amendment imposes the same rule on private firms. However, "cybersecurity" is still loosely defined and could be misinterpreted or abused by private firms. Hacking back: Private firms are limited from acting beyond their own networks to gather "cyberthreat information", such as "hacking the hackers". But the EFF noted that a "huge loophole" exists, which allows a firm to "still use aggressive countermeasures outside of its own network as long as it believed the countermeasures were necessary for protection".

Government-related privacy oversight : This amendment requires oversight on how CISPA affects civil liberties and privacy on government activity, but it does not apply to private firms. The EFF is concerned that there is "no assessment of whether companies over-collect or over-share sensitive information".

Obama's cybersecurity executive order: What you need to know. Embargoed until the delivery the State of the Union address, US President Obama signed the expected and highly anticipated cybersecurity executive order. With potentially serious implications for US and foreign citizens' privacy, here's what you need to know. Obama's cybersecurity executive order set up the foundations in which a "framework" can be constructed between the government and private sector industries , albeit without the vast majority of the privacy complications that CISPA has.

The "framework" will allow intelligence to be gathered from the aftermath of cyberattacks and cyberthreats to privately owned critical national infrastructure — such as the private defense sector, utility networks like gas and electric companies , and the banking industry — so they can better protect themselves and the wider US population.

While the executive order does touch on intelligence sharing between the US government and private firms, it doesn't undo years of privacy law-making work that continues to protect the US population. The order opened a path for wider consultation and discussion that could, however, change in due time.

Because CISPA gives legal immunity to companies already collecting personal and sensitive user and customer data of ordinary US residents, many major web and technology companies are in favor of the Bill. While Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks have not endorsed or openly supported the current version of CISPA, they backed previous iterations of the Bill. However, Microsoft's membership to lobbying group TechNet suggests otherwise. As you might expect, a number of major civil liberties groups reject the principles surrounding CISPA.

More than 1. Strong information security is critical to privacy and civil liberties, and can protect users and companies from the activities of malicious actors, be they authoritarian regimes or common criminals. Everyday, millions of ordinary users rely upon the information security of software vendors and online service providers to keep their personal information private and secure, to conduct transactions, and to express their ideas and beliefs.

CISPA, however, only addresses a small piece of the information security puzzle: sharing threat information. It does nothing to, for example, encourage stronger passphrases, promote two-factor authentication, or educate users on detecting and avoiding social engineering attacks, which is the cause of a majority of attacks on corporations. CISPA also does not address promoting more security research, more responsible disclosure or faster patches to known vulnerabilities, nor fixing the troublesome Certificate Authority system.

Facebook and other social companies have NOT endorsed this version of CISPA, but have backed previous iterations of this legislation because companies believe they need the legislation to receive information about network security threats from the government. A full list can be found here. Companies can pledge not to provide sensitive private information about their users to the government without legal process.

Companies should also join users in opposing this bill by issuing public statements prior to the hearing this Spring. Use EFF's action center to send an email to your Congress member urging them to oppose this bill. Click here to email Congress. Tweet this message or post it to your social networking profiles:.

Let's stop this terrible bill. If you're a company that would like to run a similar awareness-raising campaign, let us know by emailing rainey eff. Call on Congress to back off of any cybersnooping legislation that sacrifices the civil liberties of Internet users. Washington, D. Apple is now changing its tune about one component of its plans: the Messages app will no longer send notifications to parent accounts. Vendors of surveillance technology can make big money on the global market, frequently by enabling authoritarian governments to spy on journalists and activists.

Now, the Ninth Circuit This post is the second of two analyzing the risks of approving dangerous and disproportionate surveillance obligations in the Brazilian Fake News bill. You can read our first article here. Following a series of public hearings in Brazil's Chamber of Deputies after the Senate's approval of the so-called Fake News This post is the first of two analyzing the risks of approving dangerous and disproportionate surveillance obligations in the Brazilian Fake News bill.

You can read our second article here. The disagreements lie in whether this bill really solves the issue and whether it could do more harm than good. The vital infrastructure CISPA aims to protect includes services such as power, water and sewage, transportation, communications, financial networks and government agencies. Pretty much every company and every utility, as well as the government itself, is at least partially online these days, and anything hooked up to the Internet, from a lone computer to a huge network, is vulnerable to a debilitating attack.

The bill doesn't go into detail on types of attacks, but there are a few common ones: distributed denial of service DDOS attacks, where a large number of requests are sent to a company's servers, causing disruption of service to legitimate users; man-in-the-middle attacks, where communications from one server to another are intercepted and run through an attacker's server to spy or make harmful changes; and advanced persistent threats APT , which are long-term targeted attacks on certain companies or other entities.

Attackers may aim to install viruses, worms, spyware, trojans and other malware malicious software on target computers to wreak havoc or gain unauthorized access. There are overt intrusion attempts from hackers, a la the movie "War Games," where the protagonist dialed right into company and government computer systems. Users and system administrators have ways to protect against direct attacks, such as software or hardware firewalls], anti-virus and anti-spyware software and improved login methods that include things like complicated passwords or multi-factor authentication.

Unfortunately, many systems are breached by attackers who use social engineering methods that trick unwitting individuals into providing login information or installing malware onto their own machines.

Phishing is a common social engineering method where e-mails are sent out with file attachments containing malware, links to Web sites that look legitimate but aren't or requests for personal information. There's a more targeted version of this scam called spearphishing , where the attackers know something about their intended victims and can use that to make the e-mail sound legitimate. Even the software that a user seeks themselves might include malware, as happened in a recent case where employees at Apple, Facebook and Microsoft and presumably other companies fell prey when they downloaded infected software from popular developer sites that had been hacked.

Malicious software can infect a computer or possibly an entire network of computers and allow spying, disruption or other nefarious shenanigans. A computer might be hijacked by installing something called a bot -- software that runs certain tasks automatically and can allow an outside user to control the computer unbeknownst to the owner.

These are sometimes called zombie computers. There are networks of these hijacked machines called botnets that can be used to launch attacks against others.

There have been other notable attacks in the news of late. According to an investigation by a cybersecurity company called Mandiant, hackers in China broke into the New York Times network, apparently to spy on the e-mail of certain reporters writing about a high ranking Chinese official.

A similar attempt was made against Bloomberg News. Attacks against other companies have also been traced to China, according to Mandiant [source: Bodeen ]. Saudi Aramco, the world's largest oil producer, was attacked with a virus that replaced data on around 30, computers in the company with a picture of a burning U. These attacks were traced to a computer that was apparently not connected to the Internet, leading to speculation that it was an inside job.

Cyberattacks can be perpetrated by individuals seeking to show off their skills, criminals looking to steal intellectual property or financial information, terrorist groups aiming to wreak havoc and even governments for purposes of espionage or military activities. There are also sometimes breaches by activists or people who wish to point out potential security issues. The costs of the more ill-intentioned cyberattacks can be enormous and can include loss of trade secrets and other data, financial theft and the cost of clean-up and repair of infected systems, among other things.

And the risks also include disruption of services that we all depend upon. It had the support of a lot of companies, including large telecommunications and tech companies, but faced a lot of opposition from civil liberties groups.

On April 25, , President Obama's administration even threatened that he would veto the bill for not doing enough to protect core infrastructure from cyberthreats and failing to protect the privacy, data confidentiality and civil liberties of individuals. More than 40 amendments were proposed. Several pro-privacy amendments were rejected by the House Rules Committee on April A few amendments were passed, increasing the original bill from 11 pages to 27 pages.

These included the following:. The amended version of H. House of Representatives on April 26, by to votes, but never reached a vote in the U.

It is virtually identical to the version of H. CISPA concentrates entirely on sharing cyberthreat-related information between the government and private entities, and between private entities and other private entities. It makes provisions for government agencies to share both unclassified and classified information with private companies and utilities. For classified information, it specifies that the entities or individuals receiving information must be certified or have security clearance, and makes provisions for granting temporary or permanent security clearance to individuals within these entities.

It also allows for information sharing between private entities and other private entities, including cybersecurity firms hired by those companies to protect them. And it makes provisions for private entities to share information about cyberthreats with the federal government, and specifies that any agency receiving such information is to send it to National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center of the DHS.

CISPA exempts shared information from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act and any similar laws enacted by state, local and tribal governments. The bill exempts companies and cybersecurity firms hired to protect their systems from lawsuits for sharing information, for using cybersecurity systems to identify or obtain cyberthreat information or for any decisions they make based on the cyberthreat information, provided they are acting "in good faith.

The bill includes limits on how the federal government may use the information shared with it. The five legitimate uses given are: cybersecurity purposes; investigation and prosecution of cybersecurity crimes; protection of individuals from death or serious bodily harm; protection of minors from child pornography, sexual exploitation and other related crimes; and protection of national security.

The government is restricted from affirmatively searching the information for any purpose other than investigation and prosecution of cybersecurity crimes, and is restricted from retaining or using the information for any purpose other than the ones listed in the previous sentence. CISPA also specifically restricts the government from using library circulation records, library patron lists, book sales records, book customer lists, firearm sales records, tax return records, educational records and medical records.