Open Letter RE:Cyber Threat Info Sharing Bills

Sat Apr 11 04:22:43 UTC 2015

Dear colleagues,

As many of you know, the US Congress is currently considering various
<https://www.eff.org/document/cisa-2015-reported-senate-floor-after-ssci-markup>
bills
<https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/03/congress-takes-obama-administrations-information->
which some of its
<http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2015/02/25/senate-in-break-from-past-holds-closed-hearing-on-intelligence-threats/>
members
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/12/02/burr-senate-intelligence_n_6258162.html>
think will help fight Internet security threats via increased
information sharing between companies and the government. Unfortunately,
not only are these new information sharing powers unnecessary, the
bills' broad immunity clauses for companies
<https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/03/consequences-cispas-broad-legal-immunity>,
vague definitions
<https://www.eff.org/cybersecurity-bill-faq#copyright>, and aggressive
spying powers
<https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/04/yes-cispa-could-allow-companies-filter-or-block-internet-traffic>
essentially make them secret surveillance bills--and more government
surveillance of the Internet is the last thing we need right now.

I'm writing you today to ask you to sign on to an open letter to
Congress, which explains the fallacy of these bills
<https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/03/senate-intelligence-committee-advances-terrible-cybersecurity-bill-surveillance>
to politicians who probably don't understand the intricacies of the
network security world.

This is the fifth <https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/111/s773> time
<https://beta.congress.gov/bill/113th-congress/house-bill/624> in
<https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/112/s2105/text> as many
<https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/113/s1353> years that Congress
has tried to pass "cybersecurity" legislation. Fortunately (with the
help of many of you
<https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/04/open-letter-academics-and-engineers-us-congress>
on this list) we've been successful in preventing such misguided
legislation in the past./*If you're willing to sign on and help today,
please email me directly (off list) */and I will be happy to share a
copy of the letter for you to review before you agree to sign on.

The more signatures we can get, the more likely Congress is to listen.
All it takes is an email. Please help us make sure politicians get the
message: we don't need new legal authorities to share information that
will help keep the systems and people we protect safe from future attacks.

Thank you for your support,

-- 

| Jeremy Gillula, Ph.D.
| Staff Technologist
| Electronic Frontier Foundation
| (415) 436-9333 x158
| jeremy at eff.org
| @the_zeroth_law
| GPG Key Fingerprint:
| 4DCF A726 7C7D E327 7DD6
| 863E A25B 3CE6 2CAC 7BE9

-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 819 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://mailman.nanog.org/pipermail/nanog/attachments/20150410/ccdf4c3c/attachment.sig>