House Passes CISPA CyberSecurity – Ignores Amendment To Protect 4th Amendment

 

The Republican led U.S. House of Representatives passed CISPA on Thursday with a majority of the major problems still intact. However, they wouldn’t even allow debate on an amendment put forward by Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL) which would have made a provision for obtaining a warrant before any kind of spying into private data could be done.

Grayson’s one-sentence amendment would have required the National Security Agency, the FBI, Homeland Security and other agencies to secure a “warrant obtained in accordance with the Fourth Amendment” before searching a database for evidence of criminal wrongdoing.

CNET reports,

Grayson complained this morning on Twitter that House Republicans “wouldn’t even allow debate on requiring a warrant before a search.”

That’s a reference to a vote this week by the House Rules committee that rejected a series of privacy-protective amendments, meaning they could not be proposed and debated during today’s floor proceedings. Another amendment (PDF) that was rejected would have ensured that companies’ privacy promises — including their terms of use and privacy policies — remained valid and legally enforceable in the future.

CISPA is controversial because it overrules all existing federal and state laws by saying “notwithstanding any other provision of law,” including privacy policies and wiretap laws, companies may share cybersecurity-related information “with any other entity, including the federal government.” It would not, however, require them to do so.

That language has alarmed dozens of advocacy groups, including the American Library Association, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Reporters Without Borders, which sent a letter (PDF) to Congress last month opposing CISPA. It says: “CISPA’s information-sharing regime allows the transfer of vast amounts of data, including sensitive information like Internet records or the content of e-mails, to any agency in the government.” President Obama this week threatened to veto CISPA.

Well we can’t believe the words that come out of Barack Obama’s mouth. After all, he said the same thing about the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and look how easy that was for him to sign, even though it included the indefinite detention sections, which clearly violate the U.S. Constitution.

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