Another Big Win for Web

Yay!  Another win for the Internet.  The cyber-security bill just failed to receive enough support in the Senate to proceed to a final vote.

The legislation was a mess for privacy, though it was getting better because of the hard work of activists and a core group of pro-privacy senators — you can click here to say thanks to them.

To be fair, the opposition was a mix of pro-Internet senators and right-wing Repubs who didn’t like the regulation of ‘critical infrastructure’ (utilities and such) and people who thought that there was too much privacy protection.

So this definitely doesn’t mean that we have a clear majority of senators who support privacy/Internet freedom.  But a win’s a win!  And here’s a press release:

DEMAND PROGRESS HAILS DEMISE OF CYBER-SECURITY LEGISLATION, URGES INTERNET USERS TO THANK SENATORS WHO STOOD UP FOR PRIVACY

Contacts:  David Segal, (401) 499-5991 and david@demandprogress.org

David Moon (202) 427-7966 and moon@demandprogress.org

Washington, DC:  Million-member activist group Demand Progress hailed the demise of the Senate cyber-security bill today.  In recent months, members of the civil liberties and Internet freedom organization had sent more than 500,000 emails to the Senate urging lawmakers to stand up for Internet freedom and privacy as they debated cyber-security bills.

“There’s a newly empowered base of Internet activists across the United States, and alongside us stands a newly-strengthened corps of pro-privacy senators whom we look forward to working with to fight any future attacks on the Internet,” said Demand Progress executive director David Segal.  ”We’re grateful for their hard work to protect our privacy as the cyber-security bill was debated, and ask rank-and-file Internet users to thank them and encourage them to work with us down the road — we’ll surely need their help again.”

Internet users can sign a thank-you note to Senators Al Franken (MN), Ron Wyden (OR), Bernie Sanders (VT) and others by visiting:

http://act.demandprogress.org/sign/cyber_win/

Even prior to the bill’s demise, grassroots activism has helped compel modifications to the legislation which made it far preferable to earlier drafts and to the House cyber-security bill (CISPA) which passed earlier this year.  These changes included affirming that control of cyber-security data will remain in the hands of civilian agencies, that said data’s only allowable uses will be for cyber-security purposes or to prevent imminent threats, and others.  But privacy activists remained concerned about potential for the legislation to allow companies to monitor their users’ data.

Demand Progress is an activism organization with more than one million members which works to promote civil rights, civil liberties, and democratic government reforms.