JUST what we need ANOTHER TOOL TO ELIMINATE THE BILL OF RIGHTS–muckracker

By teleSUR

28 October 15

Civil liberties groups have long been trying to convince congress to sack the bill, calling it an invasion of privacy. 

he United States Senate passed Tuesday a controversial bill that freedom of speech advocates say grants governments new means to monitor its citizens, under the guise of security protection.

Under the new Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, companies will be allowed and encouraged to share customer data with the Department of Homeland Security that it deems could be a cybersecurity threat.

The DHS could then pass on the data to other agencies, like the FBI and National Security Agency, which would theoretically use it to defend the corporation and the customer under threat of cyber attacks.

Privacy advocates and civil liberties groups have long been urging Congress to sack the bill, or at least include certain reforms, calling it an invasion of privacy that allows companies to share users’ information with government without a warrant.

The bill also strikes down other already existing privacy laws, under the guise of added security.

The DHS itself had even spoken against the bill, saying it could derail “important privacy protections,” while tech companies argued that it should be rewritten.

“The incentive and the framework it creates is for companies to quickly and massively collect user information and ship it to the government,” Mark Jaycox, a legislative analyst for the civil liberties group the Electronic Frontier Foundation told Wired. “As soon as you do, you obtain broad immunity, even if you’ve violated privacy law.”

Exiled privacy activist Edward Snowden has echoed these sentiments and urged Congress to stop CISA.

“CISA gives companies legal immunity for violating privacy laws if they also give your data to the government,” tweeted Snowden earlier this week, following with a wave of further criticism of the bill.   SUREC