Congress slated to vote on CISPA this week, no outrage from internet companies

Last year, an effective online campaign made lawmakers reconsider the SOPA Act, which is an acronym for Stop Online Piracy. And now they have introduced a revamped version of the bill, which has gotten little attention, but could have sweeping implications for internet users and legal internet marketing companies alike.

While internet giants like Google and Yahoo got behind the initiative to have SOPA stopped they have remained relatively silent about CISPA, Cybersecurity Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, which is scheduled to for a vote in Congress on Thursday and Friday.

CISPA is intended to help guard the country from a cyber-attack by removing legal barriers to private companies and public agencies sharing threats. But privacy advocates and legal internet marketing experts say this would give law enforcement and federal agencies the right to collect private data without a warrant. They also stated the law doesn’t prevent companies from mining personal data for reasons other than security issues.

The White House threatened to veto the bill Wednesday if it passes Congress. The White House objects to the bill citing it did “not contain adequate oversight or accountability measures necessary to ensure that the data is used for only for appropriate purposes.” U.S. Representative and presidential contender Ron Paul said the law was “Big Brother writ large.”

While large internet companies like Google and Wikipedia were instrumental in defeating SOPA, they are not standing with privacy activists with CISPA. SOPA would have allowed the federal government to shut down any website for copyright infringement. CISPA however protects them at the expense of an internet user’s privacy.

As many internet users and legal internet marketing firms were alarmed by SOPA, they should also be outraged about CISPA, but without the support of the internet giants like Google and Facebook the law was gotten little attention.