CISPA Approved, Anonymous Calls For Internet Blackout, Rep. McCaul Cites Boston Bombing

On Thursday, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or CISPA, was approved by the House of Representatives by a vote of 288 to 127. Representatives attempted to connect CISPA to issues such as the Boston Marathon bombings and Iran in their arguments. The group Anonymous called for an Internet blackout on Monday, April 22 in protest of the bill. Privacy and civil liberties groups are concerned over the fact that CISPA would make it legal for websites and corporations to give any detail of users' personal information to the government without permission or justification for doing so.

Rep. Mike McCaul, R-Texas, cited the Boston Marathon bombings in his argument for adoption of CISPA. "In the case of Boston, they were real bombs," McCaul said. He added that we need to arm ourselves against "digital bombs. These bombs are on their way." Rep. Dan Maffei, Dem-N.Y., claimed that CISPA was needed to stop WikiLeaks from attempting to "hack into our nation's power grid". News organizations are calling his claim "bizarre", as it is not, and has never been,  on the agenda of the WikiLeaks, a whistle-blowing website that exposes political and corporate corruption. Rep. Candice Miller, R-Mich, argued CISPA was needed to stop hackers in countries such as Iran and North Korea from causing devastation of American infrastructure and jobs.

The law was first introduced in 2011 and was approved by the House last year, but after an storm of protest from privacy and civil liberties groups, it did not pass the Senate. Under the bill, corporations would be able or required to pass any information or data on individual users un-encrypted to the government for any or no reason whatsoever. They would have full legal protection for doing so. Critics say this impedes on civil liberties and privacy; the ACLU calls it an "extreme proposal". The White House threatened to veto the bill earlier this week unless it's amended to include more privacy and civil liberties safeguards.

The group Anonymous called for an Internet blackout in protest on Monday, April 22. They posted the following: "We are going dark on MONDAY April 22nd at 6 AM GMT for 24 hours to protest your illogical and terrorizing bill against the Internet itself. Even with the whole Internet crying out to stop this BILL, the US House of Representatives failed to do so blinded by lobbyist's money"

In 2012, over 7000 websites went dark for 24 hours in a similar protest against SOPA, which was a similar cyber-security bill. The intention isn't to shut down or attack the Internet, but simply for websites to black-out in solidarity. It is not yet known which sites may participate.