[pp.int.general] Facebook Explains Why It’s Supporting Congress’ CISPA Cybersecurity Bill

[lilo]

from other mailing list, did you see this?:

TechCrunch  |by Colleen Taylor on April 13, 2012

Facebook today explained why it has taken a positive stance on the Cyber
Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or “CISPA”, bill currently
under consideration in the United States Congress. The social networking
company is one of a group of tech companies that have announced support
for CISPA — Microsoft, Oracle, Intel, IBM, and Symantec are also among
its backers.

In a post today on the official blog for Facebook’s Washington D.C.
office, the company’s U.S. public policy VP Joel Kaplan wrote that there
are a number of bills being considered by Congress at the moment that
would notify companies like Facebook when the US government knows there
is a “critical threat” of a cyber attack. Facebook is supporting CISPA,
he said, in part because it would not make Facebook share any more of
its own data than is currently required:

“A number of bills being considered by Congress, including the Cyber
Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (HR 3523), would make it easier
for Facebook and other companies to receive critical threat data from
the U.S. government. Importantly, HR 3523 would impose no new
obligations on us to share data with anyone –- and ensures that if we do
share data about specific cyber threats, we are able to continue to
safeguard our users’ private information, just as we do today.”

Kaplan did acknowledge the criticism that CISPA has attracted from those
who say the bill is along the same lines as SOPA in terms of the
potential threat to individual privacy and freedom on the web (the
reasons for this scrutiny are articulated pretty well by this Lifehacker
post.) SOPA was, of course, the proposed anti-piracy legislation that
ultimately foundered after coming under incredibly intense scrutiny from
the tech community and beyond. Critics say Facebook’s support of CISPA
is suspect, considering that the company came out publicly against SOPA.
But Kaplan vowed that Facebook is committed to defending its users
privacy, and that its support for CISPA is in line with that value:

“…we recognize that a number of privacy and civil liberties groups have
raised concerns about the bill – in particular about provisions that
enable private companies to voluntarily share cyber threat data with the
government. The concern is that companies will share sensitive personal
information with the government in the name of protecting cybersecurity.
Facebook has no intention of doing this and it is unrelated to the
things we liked about HR 3523 in the first place — the additional
information it would provide us about specific cyber threats to our
systems and users.

The overriding goal of any cybersecurity bill should be to protect the
security of networks and private data, and we take any concerns about
how legislation might negatively impact Internet users’ privacy
seriously. As a result, we’ve been engaging directly with key lawmakers
as well as industry and consumer groups about potential changes to the
bill to help address privacy concerns.”

There will certainly be more developments here as time goes on, but one
thing seems for certain: The government has set its sights on the world
wide web, and more legislation is coming to the space one way or
another. Here’s hoping the larger tech industry is not too fatigued from
its fight against SOPA and PIPA — it will be important to stay vigilant
about the potential impact of the bills that are yet to come.

If you oppose Facebook’s backing of CISPA, there is a petition to ask
the command to rescind its support for the bill here.


TechCrunch  |by Colleen Taylor on April 13, 2012

Original Page: http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/13/facebook-cispa-support/

:-/

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lilo
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