Act now: House to vote on CISPA Thursday

EFF Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), primary sponsor of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) bill, is "confident" that the House will pass his bill on Thursday, despite the fact that the White House has criticized the approach taken in the bill, suggesting President Obama might not sign this version.

You might have heard that there were amendments that made the bill less dangerous. The ACLU, along with many other groups, including the Center for Democracy and Technology, Free Press, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Constitution Project, are still opposed to it because it still poses serious dangers to individual privacy.

1. CISPA still allows companies to share lots of sensitive and private information about our internet use with the government. [...]
2. CISPA still lets military agencies such as the National Security Agency directly collect the Internet records of American citizens who use the public, domestic, civilian Internet. [...]
3. CISPA still lets the government use the private information it collects about us for any purpose it deems fit outside of regulation. [...]

The bill still allows private companies to share information about their customers with each other and with the government with little more than an assertion that this information sharing is necessary for national security. No warrants, no subpoenas, and this law supersedes any other privacy protection law. Oh, and this, too: it would immunize companies from either criminal or civil liability for personal data shared under CISPA. So they have basically no incentive not to collect as much information as they can about their customers.

It's still a bad bill. Tell Congress to stop CISPA.