One of the bills currently meeting resistance, after it failed to pass last year, is the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA). Despite public protests the bill passed the House last week, and it’s now on its way to a Senate vote.

As the title suggests the main goal of the bill is to deal with “cybersecurity,” but with a lack of definition as to what that actually entails, this term is also one of its major weaknesses.

In short, CISPA would allow companies to spy on Internet users and collect and share this data with third-party companies or Government agencies. As long as the company states that these privacy violations are needed to protect against “cybersecurity” threats, they are immune from civil and criminal liabilities.

Critics of the bill point out that it would allow companies to spy on Internet users, and with flexible definitions of cybersecurity it could potentially be used to monitor the download habits of Internet subscribers.

A wide variety of citizen rights groups are continuing with anti-CISPA actions to prevent the bill from becoming law. Starting off today, Anonymous is holding a CISPA blackout with a few hundred websites participating. Undoubtedly other protests will make headlines in the weeks to come.

In light of the above, we thought that it would be interesting to turn the tables on some of the pro-CISPA forces. How would they like it if their download habits ended up exposed? And what if everyone could see their Google searches or the websites they visit?

As it turns out, no CISPA is needed to do the above. With help from BitTorrent monitoring company Scaneye and the privacy invasive ExtremeTracking service we found plenty of information to expose.

The House

Let’s begin the search with the House of Representatives, who voted in favor of CISPA. Data from public BitTorrent trackers shows dozens of House IP-addresses linked to pirated content. Below is a small selection of the alleged downloads we found.

Interestingly, no more downloads were recorded after November last year. While Scaneye only covers a small percentage of all BitTorrent downloads, the lack of hits may be the result of a new anti-P2P policy which also blocked Spotify on the Hill.

Aside from BitTorrent data it’s also possible to search for the browsing history of House staff. Through ExtremeTracking alone we found hundreds of hits, showing browser versions, screen resolutions, visited websites and search queries. To highlight one, here’s a House IP-address searching for an adult video site.

The Senate

Next up is the U.S. Senate who will soon have to decide on the fate of the cybersecurity bill.

The Senate results mimic the House findings. Again there are plenty of employees who allegedly downloaded copyright material. Copies of recent TV-shows and movies are relatively popular.

The Senate’s browsing habits also reveal some information, and show that articles about Wikileaks revelations are on the public reading list.

The CIA

Finally we took a look at the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), one of the organizations which will use CISPA information. Gathering intelligence on the CIA is not as hard as it sounds, since their employees use public facing IP-addresses that can be directly linked to the agency.

Again, the BitTorrent tracker data mostly turned up pirated video content that were allegedly downloaded at the CIA, with some titles nicely fitting agency’s niche. Unlike at the congressional offices, we also saw some more recent hits.

Looking at their browsing data we found only a few hits for the CIA via ExtremeTracking. However, this does include a referral from a video store selling rather perverted material.

The above is of course no argument against CISPA. Instead, it shows how much sensitive data is already out there. The question is, do we really want companies to have the ability to spy even more?

For those who want to learn more about CISPA and what action can be taken to stop it, FFTF and EFF are required further reading.

Finally, a word of advice to anyone who doesn’t want their private browsing and download habits out in the open, including Government workers. Get a VPN while you still can, or stop using the Internet altogether.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The bill that can turn the Internet into an anti-piracy spying machine was widely protested online and in Washington.

Despite this opposition CISPA was passed 248 to 168.

The vote was initially scheduled for Friday, but the House decided to speed up the approval process.

Several amendments to the original proposal were accepted during the hearing today. However, critics of the bill still believe it’s a major threat.

“CISPA is a dangerous piece of legislation and it’s worrisome that the House has passed such an overreaching bill,” said Free Press Action Fund Policy Director Matt Wood.

“The bill still lacks effective oversight and accountability for companies and government agencies collecting massive amounts of our personal data. It would curtail Internet openness and freedom by stripping away crucial privacy protections, and without providing any guarantee of protection for critical infrastructure.”

Among other things, CISPA would make it easier for ISPs to share personal information of alleged copyright infringers with third parties.

Over a million people signed petitions urging their representatives not to pass the bill, but without success.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The latest bill to gain attention online is CISPA, or the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act. As the title suggests the main goal of the bill is to deal with “cybersecurity,” but with a lack of definition as to what that actually entails, it’s also one of the major weaknesses.

In short CISPA would allow companies to spy on Internet users and collect and share this data with third-party companies or Government agencies. As long as the company states that these privacy violations are needed to protect against “cybersecurity” threats, they are immune from civil and criminal liabilities.

Some have described the bill as a new SOPA, but it’s nothing like it. Where SOPA was focused on the shutting down of copyright infringing websites, CISPA is directly targeted at individual Internet subscribers, including copyright infringers.

While the definition of a cybersecurity threat is rather vague, intellectual property is specifically mentioned in the bill. For example, among many other descriptions CISPA defines a cybersecurity purpose as follows.

“A system designed or employed to [...] protect a system or network from [...] theft or misappropriation of [...] intellectual property.”

In other words, the bill would make it possible for ISPs to actively monitor the private communications of subscribers to detect and censor the transfers of copyrighted content. In addition, the personal details of these users could then be freely shared with third parties.

It’s hard to not interpret the above as a huge problem for people’s right to private communications.

While there is little known about how companies and authorities plan to use the bill, it is the vagueness and broad definitions that get people worried. Copyright holders should have tools to protect their rights, but as it stands CISPA completely destroys people’s right to privacy under certain circumstances.

This has caused great concern among the public, and a few days ago digital rights group EFF also sent out an alarming message warning people about the looming threat posed by CISPA.

“There are almost no restrictions on what can be collected and how it can be used, provided a company can claim it was motivated by ‘cybersecurity purposes’,” EFF writes.

“That means a company like Google, Facebook, Twitter, or AT&T could intercept your emails and text messages, send copies to one another and to the government, and modify those communications or prevent them from reaching their destination if it fits into their plan to stop cybersecurity threats.”

In recent weeks CISPA has gained support from over 100 lawmakers in Congress, anti-piracy lobby groups such as the BSA and US Chamber of Commerce, but also tech companies including Facebook, Microsoft and Verizon.

These supporters are likely to argue that the bill wont be used as a massive spying machine, but if that’s the case the text should be amended to reflect that. To a certain degree CISPA faces the same problem as SOPA, in that the vagueness of the definitions give rise to speculations, in this case horrific 1984-like spying systems.

In its current form CISPA serves only to fuel the paranoid concerns of the public in which ironically the bill itself exists as the security threat.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.