CISPA cybersecurity legislation vote due in next 48 hours
The US House of Representatives has scheduled to vote on the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) for Wednesday or Thursday, and the pro and anti camps are marshaling their forces to try and sway the result.
CISPA, or H.R. 624 to give it its proper name, sets up a framework for government agencies to share attack information with private companies to help mitigate attacks. But it also overrides all existing computer privacy legislation by allowing the companies to share personal information with the government - anonymized or not - to help with "cybersecurity purposes," and be immune from prosecution if they do.
It's this latter side of the legislation that has some people's backs up, and a coalition of 34 privacy and online groups have banded together to try and stop the legislation. Supporters (who include Facebook, Microsoft and Intel) point out that alterations have been made to safeguard private information as much as possible, but the coalition isn't impressed.
