American Civil Liberties Union

Over the last few months, more than 50,000 ACLU supporters signed our petition to the president urging him to veto CISPA if it made it to his desk. Not only did the president hear your calls – yesterday, he answered them with a resounding win for your privacy and civil liberties and threatened to veto CISPA, the dangerous privacy-busting cybersecurity bill.

The president's veto threat echoed many of our concerns, and those that he raised last year when he threatened to veto CISPA 1.0. We have long warned that CISPA threatens Americans' privacy and civil liberties by allowing for companies to share our private information, like our internet records and the content of our emails, with the government. Yesterday's veto threat makes it clear that in spite of recent amendments, CISPA still fails to adequately protect our privacy. As the veto threat states:

In the digital age that we live in today, we are constantly exposing our personal information online. From using cell phones and GPS devices to online shopping and sending e-mail, the things we do and say online leave behind ever-growing trails of personal information. The ACLU believes that Americans shouldn’t have to choose between using new technology and keeping control of your private information. Each week, we feature some of the most interesting news related to technology and civil liberties that we’ve spotted from the previous week.

You did it! In the two months since Reps. Rogers (R-Mich.) and Ruppersberger (D-Md.) reintroduced their privacy-busting bill CISPA, 49,513 (and counting) ACLU supporters signed one of our biggest petitions of all time, urging President Obama to protect Americans' privacy and civil liberties and veto CISPA!

To make sure members of Congress hear your passionate plea as well, we've printed a full-page ACLU Action ad opposing CISPA in today's Politico – the go-to newspaper for the who's who of Capitol Hill! Hopefully, the president and your legislators caught a glimpse of the compelling graphic while they drank their morning coffee.

Reports of significant data breaches make headlines ever more frequently, but lost in the cloak and dagger stories of cyberespionage is the impact proposed cybersecurity programs can have on privacy. The same Internet that terrorists, spies and criminals exploit for nefarious purposes is the same Internet we all use daily for intensely private but totally innocuous purposes.

Unfortunately, in their pursuit to protect America's critical infrastructure and trade secrets, some lawmakers are pushing a dangerous bill that would threaten Americans' privacy while immunizing companies from any liability should that cyberinformation-sharing cause harm.