14 DAY TRIAL // U.S. Representative Michael Rogers, the initiator of the controversial Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), stated that the bill’s purpose was not to allow authorities to spy on regular American citizens. Instead, it’s a way of ensuring that China’s attempts to steal from the United States are stopped.
According to the Chicago Tribune, the congressman revealed his fears regarding China’s cyber espionage capabilities.
“In the last year, China has stolen so much intellectual property that it would be considered 50 times the print collection of the United States Library of Congress,” he said.
After naming China an “economic predator,” Rogers went on to say that consumers would never notice the existence of CISPA in a negative way. Furthermore, he believes that Americans should agree to the new law because it’s for their own good.
The official is confident that even privacy groups will soon understand the bill’s true purpose and the fact that it’s not something “nefarious.”
He reassures everyone that the online monitoring processes will not target personal information, except if “something malicious is embedded in it.”
In the meantime, while authorities sort this out, hacktivists continue their campaigns against CISPA. At the moment, one of the more vocal hacktivist groups seems to be UGNazi.
They launched distributed denial-of-service attacks against the sites of the Central Intelligence Agency and the Department of Justice to protest the bill.
Also, tens of academics, security experts, engineers and professionals from a number of fields have signed a letter which they sent to Congress, stating their disapproval towards CISPA and “bad” cybersecurity bills.
While they put privacy concerns at the top of their list, they believe that the vague terms used in these legislations can be interpreted in many ways, leaving room for abuse.