In a rushed vote, the House passed the controversial Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) by a vote of 248 to168. Techdirt’s Leigh Beadon calls it an explicit attack on the freedoms of every American:

Previously, CISPA allowed the government to use information for “cybersecurity” or “national security” purposes. Those purposes have not been limited or removed. Instead, three more valid uses have been added: investigation and prosecution of cybersecurity crime, protection of individuals, and protection of children. Cybersecurity crime is defined as any crime involving network disruption or hacking, plus any violation of the CFAA.

Basically this means CISPA can no longer be called a cybersecurity bill at all. The government would be able to search information it collects under CISPA for the purposes of investigating American citizens with complete immunity from all privacy protections as long as they can claim someone committed a “cybersecurity crime”. Basically it says the 4th Amendment does not apply online, at all. Moreover, the government could do whatever it wants with the data as long as it can claim that someone was in danger of bodily harm, or that children were somehow threatened—again, notwithstanding absolutely any other law that would normally limit the government’s power.

Read/WriteWeb’s Dan Rowinski:

CISPA has enjoyed relative anonymity compared to the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which sparked protests that effectively blacked out the Internet for a day earlier this year. While opposition from advocate groups like Demand Progress, Sum of Us and the Center for Democracy & Technology, among others, has been vocal, the lack of major corporations opposing CISPA is really what will let the bill slide through Congress. No major technology corporations have stepped up against CISPA the way Facebook, Reddit and Wikipedia (among hundreds of other companies and websites) did against SOPA. Because of the lack of business opposition, CISPA has been a much lower-profile bill and members of Congress have not faced grassroots pressure to vote against it. Passage of the bill depended on Republicans pulling a couple of Democrats to their side.

David Kravets at Wired’s Threat Level:

The bill’s supporters include Microsoft, Facebook, AT&T, Verizon, Oracle and many others.

The ACLU quickly blasted the measure’s passage. They and other groups said Americans’ private data should not be shared with the military, and that data sent to the government should be anonymized as much as possible to protect privacy.

“Cybersecurity does not have to mean abdication of Americans’ online privacy. As we’ve seen repeatedly, once the government gets expansive national security authorities, there’s no going back. We encourage the Senate to let this horrible bill fade into obscurity,” said Michelle Richardson, ACLU legislative counsel.

Earlier, the White House issued a veto threat.