Katie Rucke
Note to production: There are some great screen grabs of Tweets to Rogers here: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/04/who-really-opposes-cispa KT
During a Congressional hearing earlier this week on the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), one of the bill’s authors, said the only people opposed to the bill are 14-year-olds tweeting in their basement.
Here’s a video of Rogers’ statement.
Critics of CISPA, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) responded immediately to Rogers’ comment on Twitter and encouraged the public to call out Rogers by sending him a tweet sharing why they oppose CISPA.
Rogers has not stayed quiet or hesitated to respond via Twitter to critics. After Rogers received a tweet by the EFF accusing him of falsely suggesting that CISPA was limited to malware signatures, with the EFF recommending Rogers read his own bill before signing it, Rogers responded with his own tweet. He wrote that the only information that could be shared under CISPA is cyber threat information, and shared on which page of the bill the EFF could find more information.
Rogers also tweeted about all the research that went into the creation of the bill. A former FBI agent, Rogers said that without a law like CISPA, the U.S. would be vulnerable to foreign hackers and could lose high paying jobs, since losses related to cyber-economic espionage range up to $400 billion.
He also tweeted information about the creation of the bill, including that he spent 18 months working with privacy groups to protect Americans from cyber hacking, while still preserving Internet freedoms.
Sina Khanifar is the founder of FixtheDMCA.org, a campaign to reform the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. In an email to Mint Press News, Khanifar reported that in a three-hour time span on Tuesday night, there were about 1,574 tweets directed at Rogers regarding his statement about the demographics of those opposed to CISPA.
Many of those tweets followed a similar format, with a user sharing their age and profession, before stating they didn’t support the bill. Critics of CISPA say the bill impedes Internet freedom, but supporters like Rogers say the bill serves as a solution to the growing number of cyberattacks in the United States.
But it’s not just members of the public that have raised concern about CISPA. About 34 civil liberties organizations have publicly opposed the legislation, as have Internet companies like Mozilla and Reddit. More than 70 Internet security experts and academics have also spoken out against CISPA and even wrote a letter to lawmakers last year in which they shared their concerns.
“The bills nullify current legal protections against wiretapping and similar civil liberties violations for that kind of broad data sharing,” the letter said. “By encouraging the transfer of users’ private communications to U.S. Federal agencies, and lacking good public accountability or transparency, these ‘cybersecurity’ bills unnecessarily trade our civil liberties for the promise of improved network security. As experts in the field, we reject this false trade-off and urge you to oppose any cybersecurity initiative that does not explicitly include appropriate methods to ensure the protection of users’ civil liberties.”
Even the White House has spoken out against CISPA. In anticipation of a vote on the bill this week, the White House released a statement earlier this week regarding the Administration’s stance on the issue. The statement said that the Obama administration believed there was a need to clarify how the laws would be applied and raised concerns about the broad scope of liability limitations. The statement also mentioned that Senior White House advisors would recommend President Obama veto the bill if Congress approves it.