Facebook announced on Friday the controversial decision to support the CISPA bill, denying that the pending cyber-security law would be used to share details of its users.

Whilst the support of the Cyber Intelligence and Protect Act (CISPA) HR 3523 has been strong with many businesses claiming that the bill would in fact help private institutions and the government to communicate should a cyber threat occur, numerous organisations have criticised the legislation - arguing that the move would allow companies to share customer data with the government whilst ensuring the bill remains foolproof should a legal fallout take place.

A blog post on Friday published by Joel Kaplan, vice president of U.S. public policy at Facebook, explained that the bill would help protect the social networking site against any possible cyber attacks and denied that user data would be passed on to the government.

"One challenge we and other companies have had is in our ability to share information with each other about cyber attacks. When one company detects an attack, sharing information about that attack promptly with other companies can help protect those other companies and their users from being victimized by the same attack," Kaplan wrote. "Similarly, if the government learns of an intrusion or other attack, the more it can share about that attack with private companies (and the faster it can share the information), the better the protection for users and our systems."

However, many consumer actions groups remain wary about the potential consequences as its loose wording could leave itself open to interpretation - resulting in many a damaging of personal privacy.

Source: PC Mag