The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, also known as the Rogers-Rupperberger Cyber Security Bill, is supposedly designed to protect business interests from copyright theft and the government from cyberterrorism. But the government isn’t actually utilizing CISPA, except second-hand (it gives individual Internet companies the power to monitor your use and report it to the government). In reality, it’s the second shot from the government’s cannon against a free Internet. It basically contains all the nasty stuff we reported about in the previous bills (PIPA, SOPA, and the Open Act), but reworked to give individual companies the power to block your service and fine you $150,000 per instance if you dare use/copy/download a picture, a song, a video, a sentence, or anything that might be copyrighted.
By shifting the power over to the internet services, Big Brother manages to redirect your anger away from the government, and please the heck out of those idiots who believe Corporations should have all the power anyway. This is supposed to go into effect on July 12, but there’s still a chance it can be derailed like the earlier attempt.
DemandProgess.org has what may be the most popular site aimed at fighting back against CISPA. Simply visit the site’s letter campaign center, and you can easily fill out a form that will send a personal or pre-fabricated letter to your specific lawmakers. This one has gone viral in recent days, and is one of the best ways to ensure that your voice is being heard on this issue.
FreePress.net has set up an online petitioning site where you can easily fill out a form that will send the following message to Congress: “I urge you to vote “NO” on the “Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act” (HR 3523). There may be effective ways to protect vital national interests from cyber attacks. But we must use means that do not threaten our online rights the way this bad legislation does.”
You may think that this doesn’t have anything to do with you — after all you don’t download copyrighted material. Sorry, but every time you look at an Internet page, you’ve downloaded it. Every YouTube you watch, every image you Google, every word you read on the Internet belongs to somebody. You can’t look at your own Facebook page without being in technical violation of CISPA. Of course the corporations won’t fine everybody, just the ones that threaten their profits. Like they did with music sharing (remember Napster?), they’ll fine just enough people to scare the rest. But how long will it be before you complain about something, and therefore fall into that category?
The only way Internet services can make this law work is to constantly watch everything you do online. This law isn’t about protecting copyrights, it’s about making you too afraid to protest anything. CIPSA isn’t just a threat to hackers and journalists — it’s a threat to everyone. And it will take everyone to keep it from becoming a reality.
Or you can just be good little sheeple and hope you don’t get picked on…
Politicians Are Poody Heads 
And that’s not the half of it, Zorbear. It’s a gift to the big companies that want to “protect their profits,” but it’s also gives the “government, including military spy agencies like the National Security Agency, unprecedented powers to snoop through people’s personal information — medical records, private emails, financial information — all without a warrant, proper oversight or limits.”
See this site. Send a message there to Congress.
It’s a win-win for the government. They get to help out their pals in the corporations, and the corporations get to help the government further spy on us.