Look who wants to discover what you are surfing, trending, emailing, searching, downloading, torrenting and chatting on the Internet. Having twice tried and failed to pass legislation to oversee what citizens are doing on the Internet, the United States government is having another go at it.
If the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (Cispa) becomes a law, every click of your mouse and private chat with a friend on social media as also the live videos you watch in the privacy of your home, will come under the scanner of US agencies. Though it is a purely US legislation, it will affect almost every netizen in the world as most of the Internet servers and major online service providers and social network companies, including Google, Twitter and Facebook, are located there, and governed by American laws.
The new law would require Internet companies to share confidential data of their users with the Pentagon. “Right now, the US Congress is sneaking in a new law that gives them big brother spy powers over the entire web. And they are hoping the world won’t notice. We helped stop their Net attack last time. Let’s do it again,” said writer and lawyer Emma Ruby Sachs, who also works as a coordinator of Avaaz, a global web movement that fights for pressing global, regional and national issues.