Friday, May 24, 2013

Does the Government Want in on Your Web Browsing?

There’s been a lot of talk over the past few months about the government and your internet usage. CISPA, internet taxing, government monitoring, cyber security, privacy, piracy? What is it all? What’s been done? What could and should be done?

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) was a proposed law in the United States which would have allowed for the sharing of Internet traffic information between the government and technology and manufacturing companies. The idea was to help the U.S government investigate cyber threats and ensure the security of networks against cyber attacks.

The bill passed the House of Representatives, though currently seems stalled in the Senate largely due to public outcry from civil liberty and privacy groups, and the threat of a veto from President Obama. Nonetheless, large technology, finance and telecommunications companies have thrown a lot of lobbying weight and money behind the bill.


Experts say that the idea of CISPA is a good one. Protect us from cyber threats. But it’s the broad nature of CISPA that the same experts have issues with. The concern is that giving the government and big companies too much leeway will result in privacy issues.

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