Obama administration ‘opposes Cispa’ assures White House

There’s no way the bill currently going through Washington by the name of CISPA, just passed by the House of Representatives, will be allowed to be passed into law if the Obama administration’s claim today holds true. CISPA can be metaphorically represented by a bar of soap created by government agencies claiming to open lines of communication between large internet companies with clean intent, but as you’ll find if you read any of our past posts on CISPA you’ll know – the main ingredient here is acid for privacy. The bill uses broad terms like Internet Security and the safety of children to push the abilities of the government to capture any information on web-browsing citizens they like, essentially whenever they like – and the White House this week is voicing opposition.

The bill itself was supposed to be put up for a vote later than it has been presented, here this week being changed radically with several amendments that broaden its power tenfold and voted upon essentially in secret just yesterday. It was Hillary Clinton Senior Adviser for Innovation mister Alec Ross who spoke up this week on behalf of the White House.

“The Obama administration opposes CISPA. The president has called for comprehensive cybersecurity legislation. There is absolutely a need for comprehensive cybersecurity legislation. [But] part of what has been communicated to congressional committees is that we want legislation to come with necessary protections for individuals.” – Ross

At the moment it’s not clear whether this means that the Obama Administration would veto the bill when it crosses the President’s desk. The bill must be approved by the President, for those of you unfamiliar with the process here, unless when he does both the Senate and the House are able to ratify it without the President’s approval. We’ll see about that inside the next few weeks.

Meanwhile it appears that groups like Reddit are planning new Internet Blackout efforts to demonstrate the seriousness of the bill. Similar protests were initiated for the bills SOPA and PIPA earlier this year with great success.