6 Things You Need to Know About the Government's New Spy Law (CISPA)

By Scott Lemieux, AlterNet
Posted on April 18, 2012, Printed on April 21, 2012

Congress is seriously considering a bill called the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA). Intended to allow information-sharing both between corporations and between corporations and the government, it presents serious dangers to individual privacy. The most important parts of the proposed act permit corporations to share information about their customers with each other and with the government if they assert that this information-sharing is necessary for national security.

While the need for better sharing of information might be necessary in some cases, in its current form CISPA represents a particular danger – a mutually reinforcing combination of public and private threats to privacy.