may12b.indd


May 2012  287 C&RL News

Corey Williams is assistant director, ALA Office of 
Government Relations, e-mail: cwilliams@alawash.org

W a s h i n g t o n  H o t l i n eCorey Williams

Does SOPA + PIPA = CISPA?
by Lynne Bradley, director of ALA Office of 
Government Relations
They’re back! It may be in a different wolf’s 
costume, but the issues surrounding privacy, 
surveillance, and copyright issues are again 
before Congress in CISPA. At this writing, 
Cybersecurity Information Sharing and Protec-
tion Act of 2011 (CISPA, H.R. 3523) is one of 
several bills  scheduled in the U.S. House of 
Representatives during “Cybersecurity Week” 
in late April. 

Like the bills “postponed” earlier this year— 
Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA, H.R. 3261) and 
Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic 
Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act 
of 2011 (PIPA, S. 968), CISPA raises major threats 
to our basic rights under the old bromides of 
cybersecurity and the surveillance needs of law 
enforcement. 

If passed, H.R. 3523 would permit corpora-
tions like Google, Facebook, and AT&T to share 
vast amounts of electronic communications and 
personal information with the government and, 
likely, even with other companies in the name 
of cybersecurity. ALA remains concerned that 
essentially all private communications could be 
obtained by the government and used for many 
purposes, even enforcement of copyrights. 

The bill defines “cybersecurity purpose” 
as  . . . theft or misappropriation of private or 
government information, intellectual property, 
or personally identifiable information (emphasis 
added). 

CISPA would trump all current privacy laws 
including the 48-state library record confiden-
tiality laws as well as the federal Electronic 
Communications Privacy Act, the Wiretap Act, 
the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, and 
the Privacy Act. A whole new system for our 
nation’s privacy laws and policies would be 
established and extraordinary intrusions into 

established privacy rights and civil liberties 
would be legalized. 

Cybersecurity is a very serious, legitimate 
concern for our nation, our libraries, and higher 
education institutions. ALA recognizes that 
legislation is needed to clarify and create an 
appropriate regime for the government and the 
private sector to battle cyber-threats. But H.R. 
3523 would permit, even require, these compa-
nies, ISPs, and other entities to monitor all online 
communications and share personal information 
with the government without effective oversight 
just by claiming the sharing is for “cybersecurity 
purposes.” The government would be able to 
retain and use the shared information for other 
purposes, as well. 

While most libraries are not typically defined 
as ISPs (although some could be), ISP services 
often are some part of the connections in most 
network or communication systems. The library 
consequences could relate to cloud computing, 
higher education networks, privatized libraries 
and networks, and network/vendor contracts 
whether intended or not, leading us to assume 
that libraries, academia, and library users would 
be seriously affected. 

At this writing, ALA has communicated to 
House members its opposition to H.R. 3523 
unless major amendments can be made. The 
political process is in flux, but we know that 
major grassroots efforts halted SOPA and 
PIPA and have already brought more expo-
sure to the problems with CISPA. ALA asks 
academic librarians to monitor the status of 
CISPA and the other cybersecurity bills (www. 
districtdispatch.org/) as Congress proceeds in 
the coming weeks and months. The Senate starts 
its work sometime in May. Contact your state’s 
U.S. senators and representatives using ALA’s 
Legislative Action Center at http://capwiz.com 
/ala/home/ to ask Congress to make significant 
changes to CISPA to protect personal privacy, 
limit needless data collection and retention, and 
avoid use of this legislative vehicle to address 
international copyright problems.