Access joins CISPA letter
Access has joined nearly forty other privacy advocates, civil society organizations, and companies like Reddit and Mozilla in signing a letter urging the Obama administration to renew its veto threat against the resurrected cybersecurity bill CISPA.
This takes place during a Week of Action against CISPA.
The letter, addressed to the White House Cybersecurity Coordinator Michael Daniel, “encourage[s] the White House to renew its promise to veto the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA)… Because the flaws that prompted the veto threat have not been fixed.”
CISPA’s provisions allow for unlimited sharing of personally identifiable data amongst private companies and the government, without oversight or safeguards. While CISPA does not require that companies share this data, it grants them broad legal immunity from lawsuit or law–so long as they acted in “good faith.”
The bill’s Congressional backers have glossed over the concerns of privacy and civil liberties advocates at an Intelligence Committee meeting claiming that “there’s this huge gap between what they think happens and what happens.”
CISPA would not only affect users in the US, but anyone using US-based services, like Facebook or Google, or communicating on US networks–and it would set a dangerous precedent around the world for cybersecurity policy.
Last year, the bill passed the House of Representatives, but stalled in Congress after the Obama administration threatened to veto it. Now, it has returned, with the exact same privacy concerns and possibly more political support.
Join the coalition’s efforts to kill the bill once and for all by two of its largest corporate sponsors, AT&T and Verizon, to drop their support for CISPA.
Other coalition organizations have set up other great ways to participate.
- In the US: Contact your representative and tell them to oppose CISPA, courtesy of Free Press.
- Outside the US: Tell Obama to reissue a White House CISPA veto threat, thanks to the ACLU.
- Tweet at members of the House Intelligence Committee to tell them not to support CISPA, thanks to EFF.
- Join a global network of sites that stand for a free and open internet through the Internet Defense League.
Co-signers of the White House letter include:
Access
ACLU
Advocacy for Principled Action in Government
American Association of Law Libraries
American Library Association
Association of Research Libraries
Bill of Rights Defense Committee
CALPIRG
Center for Democracy & Technology
Center for Digital Democracy
Center for Financial Privacy and Human Rights
Competitive Enterprise Institute
The Constitution Project
Consumer Watchdog
Daily Kos
Demand Progress
DownsizeDC.org, Inc.
DuckDuckGo
Electronic Frontier Foundation
Entertainment Consumers Association
Fight for the Future
Free Press Action Fund
Gandi
Government Accountability Project
Liberty Coalition
Mozilla
Namecheap
National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers
New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute
NY Tech Meetup
OpenMedia
Personal Democracy Media
Politihacks
Privacy Rights Clearinghouse
Privacy Times
TechFreedom