Obama Threatens CISPA Veto

This is great news!As Talking Points reports President Obama will veto CISPA in its current form. Why should you care about CISPA, the Cybersecurity Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, the Electronic Frontier Foundation explains:

One of the scariest parts of CISPA is that the bill goes above and beyond information sharing. Its definitions allow for countermeasures to be taken by private entities, and we think these provisions are ripe for abuse. Indeed, the bill defines “cybersecurity purpose” as any threat related to safeguarding or protecting a network. As long as companies act in “good faith” to combat such a cybersecurity threat, they have leeway to protect against “efforts to degrade, disrupt, or destroy [a] system or network.” This opens the door for ISPs and other companies to perform aggressive countermeasures like dropping or altering packets, so long as this is used as part of a scheme to identify cybersecurity threats. These countermeasures could put free speech in peril, and jeopardize the ordinary functioning of the Internet. This could also mean blocking websites, or disrupting privacy-enhancing technologies such as Tor. These countermeasures could even serve as a back door to enact policies unrelated to cybersecurity, such as disrupting p2p traffic.