On Thursday 26th April 2012, the United States House of Representatives passed the CISPA bill. This is the Cyber Information sharing and Protection act of 2011. This was on a republican majority and this has significance bearing in mind it’s a democrat administration. Anyway this is not about the political analysis but on the evaluation the passing of the bill will have to the security related firms not just in the U.S but also right here in Kenya. Therefore Skywatch Technologies is right in the middle of the bill even though it’s being passed a thousand miles away.
So what’s the big deal with this bill? Well it authorizes cyber threat intelligence and information sharing between the government and private entities. It works against privacy and any law previously enacted as it gives firms like Facebook, Google etc. the freedom to share user’s information with government agencies. You wonder how this will affect you as a user of the internet, this is how. First of all when one signs in into Facebook or are trying to sign up into yahoo, they fill in their information and then at the end of the process they tick a checkbox where they agree to some regulations. Further they are assured that the information provided will be kept secure and will not be shared with third parties. This will no longer be the case when the CISPA bill is passed into law. All the various government agencies will need to do is summon the information from companies and just like that it will be available to them. That is not all; the bill further allows the government to share information with private entities. So the question here is what criteria will be used to determine which entity can and cannot be given the information. This will most definitely create a privacy chaos. It will be like plunging holes into every online room or persona.
This bill is primarily meant to better protect the United States from cyber-attack. Some people will then say that how can such a bill affect us right here in Kenya. This is what I tell whoever might want to ask that. Consider the most popular music, movies and general way of life for the so called enlightened here in Kenya. It’s for lack of a better word copycat of the U.S. Don’t get me wrong but all I am saying is that this bill will set the precedence for whatever legal framework that will be set up over here. Consider how many people are feeling the pinch right now after megaupload sites were shut down.
If you have done some online shopping or any other transaction that requires utmost security you must have noticed that the address to the website starts with https:// instead of http:// and has a golden padlock on the status bar of the browser. This means that the communication between you and the server is encrypted. Now that is an assurance that should make clients want to visit a site again and again. But then CISPA comes in. The communication might be encrypted but when it reaches the server, the company will have the liberty to share that information with the government. Now that’s not very pleasant is it?
I am not alone in the opposition of the bill. The inventor of the www (World Wide Web) Tim Berners-Lee has expressed his opposition to it stating that it will threaten the rights of people in America and by extension anywhere else in the world because whatever happens in America tends to affect people all over the world; recall the recession!
Of course the bill awaits passing of the senate and if it’s of any consolation the white house has threatened to veto it. I guess all we can do right now is sit tight and see what happens in the next couple of months.
wow socrates II aka M*3 I am also in for the opposition.this also mean that web developers will not be able to share the nice code snippets already developed through downloads , those software cracks from the likes of beast will nolonger be available and before we can get to a higher level of being able to be crackers as them i guess we will have to pay a great price.am totally opposing this issue of CISPA
now you talking. but too bad that our voices cannot be heard from down here so the only thing we can do is simply create an awareness.