Despite the fact that I like to read about patents more and more each day, and although my report comprises three news and all of them dealing with patent disputes, I would prefer that my latest news comments be about privacy and its never ending story. Why? Because of these two articles that focus on CISPA and Cyber Europe 2014.
Until now, I’ve never had the chance to read and talk about CISPA and, frankly, since SOPA, I cared less about the US legislative system, focusing mainly on Romanian and European legal issues. So, find out with me, all about this famous US normative act, which was branded and RE-branded in these so-called legislative efforts to (re) introduce a bill that was previously rejected. Compared to a cat’s multiple lives, CISPA attracts the public attention mainly because of its privacy issues, which had aroused from the first day this law was proposed.
An article published by cnet.com in 2013 explained that the bill allowed private sector companies — including technology firms, such as Facebook, Twitter, Google and Microsoft, among others — to pass “cyber threat” data, including personal user data, to the U.S. government.
About the same law, the American Civil Liberties Union said that “would create a loophole in all existing privacy laws, allowing companies to share Internet users’ data with the National Security Agency, part of the Department of Defense, and the biggest spy agency in the world — without any legal oversight.”
The bill is currently in discussion draft, but is surprising everyone now with its revival and continued renaissance because, as I said, it was constantly reintroduced in the US Senate under different names. As a Romanian, I am sure that these kinds of things are no news for you and you remember that, after being declared anti-constitutional, the same legal text of law no.298/2008 was reintroduced with a different name – Law no.82/2012 on the retention of personal data generated or processed by electronic communications services providers.
2. Cyber Europe 2014 is the largest and most comprehensive EU cyber-security exercise. It involves multi-state cooperation for dealing with online attacks within the European Union’s territory. It also involves a lot of information sharing. But you can skip the criticism and read more about Cyber Europe 2014 from the official ENISA website.