Best Hope for Privacy Protections in Cybersecurity Legislation, Says One Advocate
The best chance for increased privacy protections on the Internet will be a Senate cybersecurity bill, Center for Democracy and Technology President Leslie Harris told us following an American Association for the Advancement of Science event. She said the prospects for bicameral passage are good because “the House wants a bill.” Cybersecurity lobbyist Stewart Baker, a former assistant secretary of policy at the Department of Homeland Security, took issue with her and other privacy advocates’ push, saying on a panel that they're “devoting all their time and all their efforts to ensure our cybersecurity efforts, small though they may be, fail.”
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Harris told the panel she didn’t know when the Senate would address cybersecurity, but the House Republicans’ concession on a civilian-control amendment to the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) (HR-624) made her more confident about the inclusion of privacy provisions in an eventual piece of legislation. “I think at this point the House wants a bill, and these fights are going to melt away. Basically, if the Senate can get to the right point on privacy, I don’t think the House is going to fight them on that,” she said. “If they want a bill signed, then they've got to work with the president.”
To show that addressing cybersecurity is imperative, Baker said China has built the technology George Orwell brought to life in the novel 1984, with its advancements for spying on citizens. China has showed it’s “willing to work pretty hard to maintain their system of government. They've had to adjust, they've given up on totalitarianism for a more authoritarian approach that gives people an opportunity to talk but makes sure they know they're being watched,” Baker said. “There is nobody in this country who if they pissed off the Chinese government, would not find themselves within the next week living in George Orwell’s world.” The U.S., said Baker, has so far “totally failed the test” of addressing cybersecurity threats.
For Harris, the biggest challenges facing Internet governance are the international debates over whether governments alone or a multitude of stakeholders should control the Internet, she said. In the Chinese and Russian model of Internet governance, she said, “human rights take a backseat to political control.” The controversial World Conference on International Telecommunications last year proved that other regimes were willing to support such a model, she said. She sees a troubling and “extraordinary resentment” that the Internet has “broken” legitimate sovereignty, and expects particularly volatile discussions of Internet governance going forward, she said.
"Copyright terms are far too long, and that gives these companies the handle to ratchet up the punishment and enforcement for their copyrights,” said Public Knowledge CEO Gigi Sohn. Similar problems exist with overzealous patent litigation and so-called trolling, she said, which has kept venture capitalists and others from investing in new businesses for fear of being sued. Though she said an overhaul of copyright law tops her wish list, she told us after the panel she fears efforts to consider rewriting the law may be too little, too late. She welcomed the discussion House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., opened when he said he would begin hearings on copyright law (WID April 25 p6), but said the last time the law was rewritten, the process took 20 years. “I'm afraid that if they start trying to do something big, they won’t get anything done at all,” she said.