

Mozilla slams CISPA, says the bill "infringes on our privacy." - quadrahelix
http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2012/05/01/mozilla-slams-cispa-breaking-silicon-valleys-silence-on-cybersecurity-bill/

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tptacek
"Breaking Silicon Valley's Silence"? What? Didn't Google lobby in favor of
CISPA, and Facebook support it publicly?

This is also a very misleading summary of the history behind CISPA. It
suggests that late-breaking amendments to CISPA widened its impact; in fact,
unless you're concerned about child pornography or bodily-harm threats, the
later amendments to CISPA _drastically narrowed_ the act's reach. The bill the
House passed adopted the classic C-I-A triad (confidentiality, availability,
integrity) to define "cyber threat", and _explicitly exempted_ "threats" that
target only "consumer licensing".

I don't support CISPA, but the media's track record in representing it is
terrible. This is unsurprising: they benefit directly from outrage about this
silly bill, since outrage -> rageviews -> ad dollars.

~~~
Natsu
The one thing I want to see is a clear explanation of why CISPA's supporters
think we need this. Who needs these privacy law exemptions and why?

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tptacek
I'm not a lawyer, I just play one on message boards. That said:

These aren't really privacy law exemptions so much as they are clarifications.
It is very unlikely that anyone would prevail in a suit against an ISP who
shared their private information incident to an actual attack on their network
under the current privacy laws in the US. The ECPA explicitly carves out
exceptions for this kind of sharing already. CISPA does almost nothing but
modernize the language.

In fact, because ECPA carves out exemptions to privacy for any action that can
be reasonably construed as "protecting the service", CISPA may _narrow_ the
current exemptions. If your ISP tomorrow said "sign this contract that
covenants that you won't use BitTorrent", the ECPA probably allows them to
capture, inspect, and share your personal information incident to
investigating you pirating software. CISPA explicitly _does not_ allow that
--- it literally contains language saying that consumer contract terms are out
of the scope of CISPA.

Again, bracket this whole thing (as always, please) with an implied "from a
plain reading, to a layperson". A lawyer or legislative professional might
catch something sinister here that I've missed. I do not find EFF's "catches"
here particularly convincing. Others clearly do.

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rooshdi
The fact that some of these internet companies, such as Google, haven't taken
a formal position is perplexing...or maybe not considering this may benefit
their shareholders at the expense of society's privacy. Well, at least the
non-profit is speaking out. I wonder if me posting something like this
constitutes as a "national security" threat?

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joelthelion
Unfortunately Mozilla is losing a lot of its weight with Firefox losing
traction fast. Which is a shame, because it's still one of the best browsers
out there, and it's distributed without a commercial agenda in mind.

