Should we be as worried about CISPA as we were about SOPA?

[Commentary] Just a few months ago, internet companies and the technology community came together to protest two anti-piracy bills (SOPA and PIPA) because they would have breached free-speech protections and other social safeguards in the name of stopping copyright infringement. Now, a new bill called CISPA that just passed in the House of Representatives is getting a lot of negative attention, with some saying it is just as evil as SOPA, and others — including Facebook and Microsoft — supporting the legislation and arguing that it is much more nuanced than either of its predecessors. So which is it?

A group of over 50 university professors, entrepreneurs and information scientists have published an open letter to Congress calling on lawmakers to oppose CISPA because they say the bill (and its Senate counterpart) would allow companies to hand over the private date of their users to entities like the Department of Homeland Security, and the only requirement is that the information involved must somehow be associated with the vague concept of “cyber-security.” So is CISPA as bad as SOPA? Probably not, in the sense that SOPA required ISPs and other companies to engage in all kinds of activity that infringed on free speech and subjected even innocent users to potential seizure of their websites, etc. But the risk when designing a bill that hinges on a concept as vague as “cyber-security” is that it allows companies and government agencies fairly wide latitude to accumulate whatever information they wish — and allows them to do so without even a warrant or a judge’s order. Companies like Facebook may promise that they would never do this unless it is really important, but how can we know that for sure?