Bury CISPA for Good

This week Internet advocacy groups — including the Free Press Action Fund — are uniting to protest CISPA, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act.

As we wrote last month when the bill was introduced, this is actually CISPA’s second time around (it stalled last year in Congress). The “new” CISPA — we call it the zombie bill — is actually identical to the old CISPA. It would protect companies like Facebook and Microsoft from legal liability when they hand over your sensitive online data to the federal government, without any regard for your privacy.

The bill would permit the government — including the National Security Agency and the Department of Homeland Security — to use that information for matters that have nothing to do with cybersecurity. The whole process would, of course, take place behind closed doors, with no accountability to the public.

The coalition of organizations launching this week’s actions agrees that legislation intended to enhance our computer and network security must not sacrifice long-standing civil liberties and protections.

Participants include:

• Access
• ACLU
• Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of reddit
• American Library Association
• Association of Research Libraries
• Bill of Rights Defense Committee
• Center for Democracy & Technology
• Center for Financial Privacy and Human Rights Competitive Enterprise Institute
• Competitive Enterprise Institute
• Consumer Watchdog
• DailyKos
• Demand Progress
• DownsizeDC.org
• Electronic Frontier Foundation
• Entertainment Consumers Association
• Fight for the Future
• Free Press Action Fund
• Government Accountability Project
• Internet Defense League
• Liberty Coalition
• New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute
• NY Tech Meetup
• OpenMedia
• Personal Democracy Media
• Politihacks
• TechFreedom

Here are some ways you can join in the protest:

• If you haven’t already, tell Congress to vote “NO” on this destructive bill.
• Our friends at the Electronic Frontier Foundation have built an easy-to-use (and easy-to-share) Twitter tool to help you contact members of the House Intelligence Committee and express your concerns about CISPA. Tweet at Congress, embed the tool on your own site and spread the word about why CISPA is so harmful.
• The Free Press Action Fund is a member of the Internet Defense League, a coalition of organizations dedicated to Internet freedom. Drawing on the success of the SOPA blackouts, the Internet Defense League enables its members to display an action button or banner on their websites. You can use the League’s tools to protest CISPA on your own website. Just enter your site’s information on the League’s site. You will then receiveembeddable code that will allow you to display an action alert.

If CISPA passes, it would be a major blow to our freedom to connect online. Help protect the free and open Internet and take action to bury CISPA for good.