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The one thing I want to see is a clear explanation of why CISPA's supporters think we need this. Who needs these privacy law exemptions and why?
by Natsu 15y ago
The one thing I want to see is a clear explanation of why CISPA's supporters think we need this. Who needs these privacy law exemptions and why?
- tptacek 15y agoI'm not a lawyer, I just play one on message boards. That said: These aren't really privacy law exemptions so much as they are clarifications. It is very unlikely that anyone would prevail in a suit against an ISP who shared their private information incident to an actual attack on their network under the current privacy laws in the US. The ECPA explicitly carves out exceptions for this kind of sharing already. CISPA does almost nothing but modernize the language. In fact, because ECPA carves out exemptions to privacy for any action that can be reasonably construed as "protecting the service", CISPA may narrow the current exemptions. If your ISP tomorrow said "sign this contract that covenants that you won't use BitTorrent", the ECPA probably allows them to capture, inspect, and share your personal information incident to investigating you pirating software. CISPA explicitly does not allow that --- it literally contains language saying that consumer contract terms are out of the scope of CISPA. Again, bracket this whole thing (as always, please) with an implied "from a plain reading, to a layperson". A lawyer or legislative professional might catch something sinister here that I've missed. I do not find EFF's "catches" here particularly convincing. Others clearly do.