Access Joins Obama Administration CISPA Veto Letter

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.

  1. In the US: Contact your representative and tell them to oppose CISPA, courtesy of Free Press.
  2. Outside the US: Tell Obama to reissue a White House CISPA veto threat, thanks to the ACLU.
  3. Tweet at members of the House Intelligence Committee to tell them not to support CISPA, thanks to EFF.
  4. 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

Reddit

TechFreedom