For Internet activists who want to protest the Cyber Intelligence Security Protection Act, allies are hard to come by. But at least one U.S. politician has come out swinging against CISPA: Texas Representative Ron Paul.
An Internet hero to some for his libertarian stances, Paul was one of the Stop Online Piracy Act’s fiercest critics in Washington.
On Monday, Paul devoted his weekly call-in message—called Texas Straight Talk—to describing the evils of CISPA, which he described as “the latest assault on Internet freedom” and comparable to SOPA.
Paul cited warnings about CISPA from the Electronic Frontier Foundation that the bill could easily be interpreted to allow federal agencies to spy on U.S. citizens.
He described the bill as “essentially an Internet monitoring bill that permits both the federal government and private companies to view your private, online communications without judicial oversight.”
Paul added that CISPA indicated an even larger, graver danger:
“CISPA represents an alarming form of corporatism as it further intertwines governments with companies with companies like Google and Facebook. It permits them to hand over your private communications to government officials without a warrant, circumventing the well-known, established federal laws like the Wiretap Act and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. …
“Imagine having government-approved employees embedded at Facebook, complete with federal security clearances, serving as conduits for secret information about their American customers.”
On the social news site Reddit, where users have a love-hate relationship with the GOP candidate but are almost uniformly outspoken against CISPA, multiple users hurried to post links to Paul’s speech.
“As someone who disagrees with a lot of his platform, it’s stuff like this that makes him the clear-cut choice for me,” wrote KingLeo23. “Consistent message and integrity of character.”
According to Paul, the House of Representatives could vote on CISPA as early as this week.
Photo via Ron Paul/Facebook