As CISPA Debate Rages Again, Obama Already Using Its Powersselfnews Post It was recently announced that the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or CISPA, will once again be coming for a vote in the United States Congress. Lawmakers cited increased threats from hackers and cyber espionage as the motivation for its reintroduction. This version of CISPA is reportedly identical to last years version that easily passed in the House by a count of 248 to 168. Congressman Jared Polis (D-Colo), who voted against the measure, said the law would waive every single privacy law ever enacted in the name of cybersecurity. Other critics have pointed out that CISPA gives Obama a kill switch over the Internet in a national cyberemergency. CISPA has been roundly criticized by privacy advocates as enshrining the powers of the government to surveil and control the Internet in two overarching ways. First, government can lay claim to protecting critical infrastructure under which the Web has now been included. This opens the door for requesting that private companies like Google, Facebook and so far 800 others work openly on the initiative as well. Both attempts to pass it in the Senate in 2012 narrowly failed with the last vote of 51-47 occurring in November which was closer than its 52-46 August vote. After its failure, the White House and CISPA co-sponsor Joe Lieberman warned the public that Obama would enact an executive order if lawmakers wont pass the bill. The realityis that much of CISPAs privacy-shattering policies already are taking place under the FISA Amendments Act which Obama reauthorized for an additional 5 years. As the Electronic Frontier Foundation reported back in March: The extent of warrantless wiretapping and surveillance already being shared between the government and private companies has been exposed by The Washington Post, as well as former NSA whistleblowers William Binney and Thomas Drake, and former ATT technician Mark Klein. The Posts investigation revealed such a massive overlap of government and corporate interests that it is already operating free of transparency and oversight. Their findings were appropriately titled, A hidden world, growing beyond control. Perhaps it is because of the exposure these whistleblowers have given that CISPA aims to go astep further and give corporations the power to prevent hard evidence leaks. As Stephen C. Webster of Rawstory states: There is no doubt that the apparatus of CISPA is already in effect and its merely going to be justified through legislation. The Supreme Court refuses to address privacy issues and has effectively shut down all lawsuits aimed at holding accountable those engaging indomesticwarrantless wiretapping. And there are many private companies ready to offer their assistance to help track everyones digital movements and communications. Increasing coverage of social media was brought to the U.S.governmentin 2010 by war criminal Raytheons RIOT search technologywhich has been called a Google for spies. Covert eavesdropping of VoIP services like Skype has been introduced by the private sector (including Microsoft) through patents filed as far back as 2007. And massive, largely unknown data mining companies like Axciom which began in 1969 now collects and analyzes 50 trillion data transactions per year. So CISPA passing or Obamas executive order in the name of cybersecurity is of little practical consequence other than legalizing past privacy violations and offensive state-sponsored cyber attacks by the U.S. government. It wont even make the governments cybersecurity actions transparent, but it certainly will make it transparent that a whole new level of the Internet Security Industrial Complex is taking shape. Read other articles by selfnews Post Here 