Cybersecurity bill is just legalized spying on Americans

Guest Commentary:

Well into the third decade of widely available Internet access for regular people, it’s getting more and more difficult to focus public attention on threats to our freedoms in cyberspace. We’re tired of having to constantly keep track of and squash the latest political and bureaucratic schemes to seize power over the Internet and what we do on it. And the politicians and bureaucrats are taking advantage of that fatigue, as we saw earlier this year when the Federal Communications Commission promulgated its Net Neutrality coup.

Now the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act looks to be within weeks or even days of final passage by Congress. The United States House of Representatives has already passed one version of the bill, and the Senate followed suit with another on October 27. Once the two houses reconcile their slightly different bills and take another vote, C.I.S.A. will be on its way to President Obama’s desk for signature.

It’s time to get on the horn to your congresscritters and tell them, in no uncertain terms, that you expect them to vote no on C.I.S.A. when it comes back to the House and Senate floors for final approval.

The conceit behind C.I.S.A. is that it’s a cybersecurity bill which merely makes it easier for tech companies to share information with the federal government as a way of countering cyber-attacks. Good for everyone. Adequate privacy protections. Yada yada yada.

If you believe that line, I’d like to talk with you about a friend of mine who died recently -- a Nigerian general who left $10 million in a bank account, and I could use your help getting it out.

If you’re interested in cybersecurity, the last entity you want to trust with any of your information, ever, is the federal government. Remember, these are the guys whose Office of Personnel Management got hacked earlier this year, exposing the personal information of more than 20 million people ... that we know of. The feds are to cybersecurity what Inspector Clouseau is to police procedure.

The real purpose of C.I.S.A. is to make it easier for companies who cooperate with the illegal, unconstitutional domestic spying operations of the National Security Agency and other government agencies to get away with doing so. That’s it. That’s all. Nothing else.

C.I.S.A. is the latest in a long line of actual and attempted Internet power grabs by the D.C. crowd. I know you’re tired of fighting these outrages. I know you’re tired of even hearing about them. But it’s important. Let’s put C.I.S.A. down like the rabid dog it is, and put the politicians on notice that while we may be tired, we’re not asleep.

Thomas Knapp is director of the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism.