Major Tech Companies Recently Joined Growing Opposition to Surveillance Bill
Washington D.C. (October 21, 2015) — Access Now and civil society organizations are today launching a campaign to drive calls to the U.S. Senate in opposition to the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA, S. 754). A call tool hosted at www.StopCyberSpying.com allows constituents to quickly share their concerns with their representatives.The Senate is expected to consider CISA through next week, but could be derailed by growing opposition.
“Everyone is for ‘cybersecurity,’ but that’s not what this bill is about. This bill is being sold as security, but it’s a backdoor to surveillance. The more people learn about the bill, the more the opposition grows. We are glad to help empower the people to contact their representatives and stop this seriously misguided, counterproductive legislation,” said Nathan White, senior legislative manager at Access.
StopCyberSpying.com is a platform for groups working to push Congress to reject CISA and focus on more impactful means of promoting digital security online. Using the site, constituents previously generated six million faxes to oppose CISA. The site also collates blog posts and statements in opposition to the bill from dozens of civil society groups.
Civil society groups and the nation’s leading security experts strongly oppose CISA because, among other concerns, it:
- Allows companies to share unnecessary personal and identifiable information with the government or other private entities;
- Undermines civilian control of domestic cybersecurity by authorizing information to be shared directly with, or mandating that it be automatically disseminated to, the National Security Agency;
- Fails to establish meaningful use limitations and allows law enforcement to investigate non-cyber related crimes with information it receives; and
- Threatens internet security by authorizing companies to retaliate against perceived cyber threats.
Opposition to CISA now includes: Access Now, American Association of Law Libraries, American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, American Civil Liberties Union, American Library Association, Apple, Association of Research Libraries, Bill of Rights Defense Committee, Brennan Center for Justice, Center for Democracy and Technology, The Constitution Project, the Computers and Communications Industry Association, Defending Dissent Foundation, Demand Progress, Dropbox, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Fight for the Future, Free Press, Media Alliance, National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, New America’s Open Technology Institute, Niskanen Center, OpenTheGovernment.org, Pen American Center, Reddit, The Sunlight Foundation, TechFreedom, Twitter, Yelp, and the Wikimedia Foundation.