Facebook Defends CISPA With Talk Of Protection

Just like SOPA, Facebook has responded to the growing concerns rising around an internet "security" bill presented to the House of Representatives this week – only this time they're taking the opposite stance. If you'll recall, SOPA (and its twin PIPA) were bills that allowed the US Government to effectively shut down any website it saw illegally sharing content – this set of bills was much too broad and were relatively quickly axed amid a giant bit of outcry on the part of the greater web. Now that CISPA has arrived, Facebook is seeing things differently.

Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg himself spoke out against SOPA and PIPA, this time the bill known as CISPA has been defended by Facebook's Joel Kaplan, Vice President-U.S. Public Policy. His explanation of the bill notes the following important facts – bolded in the text shared with Facebook in a statement today:

Importantly, HR 3523 would impose no new obligations on us to share data with anyone –- and ensures that if we do share data about specific cyber threats, we are able to continue to safeguard our users' private information, just as we do today.

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The concern is that companies will share sensitive personal information with the government in the name of protecting cybersecurity. Facebook has no intention of doing this and it is unrelated to the things we liked about HR 3523 in the first place...

Those of you still unsure of what the CISPA bill includes, check out the PDF of the actual bill as well as our write-up on the situation from earlier today. Don't let this one out of your sights, folks!