CISPA and the Corporate Lobby for Internet Censorship

Maplight reports that CISPA, the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, known to its critics as the internet censorship act, has picked up nearly three dozen co-sponsors in the US House following a corporate lobbying effort of IBM executives to their puppets in the legislature.  From Maplight:

On Monday, the same day that IBM flew nearly 200 executives to Washington D.C. to lobby Congress in support of CISPA, 35 members of the House signed onto the bill as new co-sponsors. Proir to Monday, CISPA had only 2 co-sponsors since being introduced in February.
On Tuesday, the Obama Administration issued a veto threat against the bill in its current form citing privacy concerns.
Data: MapLight analysis of reported contributions to the 35 new CISPA co-sponsors and the entire House from interest groups supporting and opposing CISPA.

• New co-sponsors have received 37 times as much money ($7,311,336) from interests supporting CISPA than from interests opposing ($200,062).
• Members of the House in total have received 16 times as much money ($67,665,694) from interests supporting CISPA than from interests opposing ($4,164,596).

The EFF and the ACLU have organized a campaign to defeat CISPA.  From the EFF:

CISPA is a dangerous "cybersecurity" bill that would grant companies more power to obtain "threat" information (such as from private communications of users) and to disclose that data to the government without a warrant -- including sending data to the National Security Agency.

CISPA was recently reintroduced in the House of Representatives. EFF is joining groups like ACLU and Fight for the Future in combating this legislation.  Last year, tens of thousands of concerned individuals used the EFF action center to speak out against overbroad and ineffective cybersecurity proposals. Together, we substantially changed the debate around cybersecurity in the U.S., moving forward a range of privacy-protective amendments and ultimately helping to defeat the Senate bill.