Evan from Fight for the Future writes, “Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, IBM, Salesforce / Heroku, and a handful of other tech companies just betrayed billions of people’s trust. They signed a letter endorsing CISA, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act.”
“It’s a bill that would give those companies sweeping legal immunity to share your personal data with the government, enabling more surveillance and violations of civil liberties. Congress votes on CISA soon, and if more companies endorse it we’ll be in big trouble. Thousands of people are fighting back. Get the full list of companies here, and spread the word so people know.”
What’s wrong with CISA?
If you’re not up to speed, CISA is a mass surveillance bill posing as a “cybersecurity” bill. Congress has been blindly scrambling to react to the OPM hacks, and their solution is a giveaway to the NSA and giant corporations:
* All privacy policies effectively null and void. Companies can share any private user data with the government, without a warrant, as long as the government says it is being used for a “cybersecurity” purpose.
* Data is shared with a wide array of government agencies, from the FBI and NSA, to the IRS and local law enforcement.
* In exchange, companies are given blanket immunity from civil and criminal laws, like fraud, money laundering, or illegal wiretapping (if a violation was committed or exposed in the process of sharing data).
* Companies that play along can get otherwise classified intelligence data from the government, including private information about their competitors.