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Microsoft Backs Away From CISPA Support, Citing Privacy
suraj.sun writes "CISPA, the hotly-contested cybersecurity bill making its way through Congress, has been supported by Microsoft since it was introduced. However, the company now tells CNET that any such legislation must 'honor the privacy and security promises we make to our customers,' while also 'protecting consumer privacy.' As you may recall, the U.S. House passed CISPA on Thursday. The Obama administration has threatened to veto the bill. Quoting CNET: 'That's a noticeable change — albeit not a complete reversal — from Microsoft's position when CISPA was introduced in November 2011. To be sure, Microsoft's initial reaction to CISPA came before many of the privacy concerns had been raised. An anti-CISPA coalition letter (PDF) wasn't sent out until April 16, and a petition that garnered nearly 800,000 signatures wasn't set up until April 5. What makes CISPA so controversial is a section saying that, "notwithstanding any other provision of law," companies may share information with Homeland Security, the IRS, the NSA, or other agencies. By including the word "notwithstanding," CISPA's drafters intended to make their legislation trump all existing federal and state laws, including ones dealing with wiretaps, educational records, medical privacy, and more.'"
This is a first for Microsoft, protecting users' privacy.
Seriously? What is wrong with you guys? How in the fuck did you even come up with a system where non related shit can be tacked on to a bill? Is it bullshit that got added on later or were your vaunted founding fathers slightly retarded?
They will keep putting forward bill after bill, chipping away privacy rights a little at a time if necessary. Any setback is merely temporary for them. Time (and money) is on their side.
What someone should be doing is introducing legislation that enumerates, codifies, and protects specific rights and expectations of privacy that citizens have, and then work the anti-terrorist/copying/IP laws around that framework. (I know, we shouldn't need to do this, but it's our system apparently.) This is bass-ackwards.
Please - the only reason Microsoft is backing away from it now is because they were caught supporting it. Look for them to happily support the next anti-consumer bill to come down the pike if the bill benefits them... and just like this time, and SOPA before it, they'll quietly hope that this time, nobody notices.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Microsofts business is to sell software
They also have a substantial and growing online services division, and they are still in a precarious position when it comes to antitrust laws. Microsoft does not want to endanger its relationship with the government -- a relationship that basically resulted in the punishment for their previous antitrust case being completely ignored. They also sell technology to law enforcement agencies that helps in the gathering of computer evidence.
A business built on privacy violations? No, nobody can accuse Microsoft of that, at least not without some real evidence to back it up. A friendly and valuable relationship with the government, that has allowed them to continue to dominate various markets? Absolutely, and that is why they supported CISPA -- it basically gave them a free pass to cultivate that relationship.
Palm trees and 8
So you are going to point out some 1 line marketing snippet, take it completely out of context, and then extrapolate it to mean that Microsoft is selling private consumer data to various governments. Please elaborate because I feel like I'm missing something here.
-1 overrated isn't the same thing as "I disagree".
Perhaps you missed the part about technology given only to law enforcement, which allows them to take forensic data from live systems -- technology that criminals will be able to study, but which is deliberately hidden from law abiding citizens. The point is not that Microsoft is actively handing data over, the point is that Microsoft is not going to stand up to law enforcement and say, "No, we are not voluntarily helping you." The opposite is true: Microsoft is giving away technology at no cost to help law enforcement gather data from computers.
Microsoft did show an iota of backbone when it came to the clipper chip, but times have changed. Now Microsoft wants to cultivate a friendly relationship with the government. Perhaps the OP was a little strong with calling this a "first" for Microsoft, but it is not exactly something that we should expect either.
Palm trees and 8
I can't believe this comment hasn't been judged as either flame-bait or trolling. Even if Microsoft wasn't interested early on in collecting data, since they began focusing on the Web, they've made every effort to facilitate the efforts of their customers (not end users) to do so.
Aside from this, what is Bing! if not another attempt to pigeonhole every end user by their habits, preferences and communications.
Pro-privacy... give me a break.
do you even know what terrorism even is? or do you just use scary words to get sheeple to your jackass blog? btw nice porn ad right in the middle of your article
Microsoft is giving away technology at no cost to help law enforcement gather data from computers? So is open source. Get over your bad self.
OSS forensics tools are available to everyone, and provided by people who generally believe in giving away their code. COFFEE is available only to law enforcement, and provided by a company which generally makes money from selling closed-source, proprietary software. Please don't try to pretend that the two situations are even remotely comparable.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
No. CISPA requires (in its current reincarnation), that a U.S. company allows access to all its servers on a request based on CISPA, may they be domestic or overseas.
As such, CISPA collides with european requirements.