It's time for the 'Occupy Movement' to get motivated again, and to target cyber-space as much as Wall Street or Bay Street.



That's the word from Web activists, citizens advocacy groups, privacy commissioners and even the 'father of the Internet', Tim Berners-Lee.



Individuals and organizations around the world are speaking out against CISPA,the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act.

That there is another legislative acronym threatening online data privacy and personal security so soon after SOPA and PIPA, you might think it's an April Fool's joke.



It even has the same punch line - civil liberty and personal privacy in all of our online communications, blog postings, photo sharing and social networking will be sacrificed to big government, as well as the service providers, aggregation companies, and data mining corporations that operate, monitor and monetize the Internet.

Opponents warn that the U.S. legislation (old and new alike) would let those entities intercept your emails and text messages, and to save, store, share, modify or prevent them from reaching their destination, all under the rubric of 'stopping cybersecurity threats'.



So, organizations around the world, including here in Canada, are united against the proposed bill, and its impact on countries and 'Net-izens outside the U.S.



They say the proposed legislation uses "dangerously vague language" to define what data can be collected, who can collect it, when and why.



And while it is a U.S. law, it still has direct and immediate implications for Canada (should it pass as configured).



That's due to the little known but highly impactful Canada-US agreement known as Beyond the Border: A shared vision for perimeter security and economic competitiveness.



That deal maps out the integration of border management, trade facilitation and increased security between the two countries.



It means that a U.S. cybersecurity strategy adopted today may well become a Canadian cybersecurity strategy tomorrow.



Canadian Privacy Commissioners have expressed similar concern that programs adopted under that initiative will lead to an unjustifiable loss of privacy for Canadians, and they've issued a joint statement to that effect.



Even Berners-Lee, the oft-credited 'inventor of the Internet' has waded into the fray, with his own warnings about CISPA's far-reaching impact:

"[CISPA] is threatening the rights of people in America, and effectively rights everywhere, because what happens in America tends to affect people all over the world," he said in an interview.



"Even though the SOPA and PIPA acts were stopped by huge public outcry, it's staggering how quickly the U.S. government has come back with a new, different, threat to the rights of its citizens."

