http://www.zdnet.com/cispa-passes-u-s-house-death-of-the-fourth-amendment-7000014205/
This may matter to those outside the US too, as it concerns corporate or company behavior -- US companies like Microsoft often [generally?] follow US regs regardless contradictory EU rules.
I've read several write-ups on this -- this from ZDNet is pretty good overall... What it doesn't do is add too much politics to the mix [though it's still there in the author's interpretations]. I will add a dash of politics myself, but only to say that there's a fair chance it passed the House as a taunt or dare directed towards the President &/or his party which controls the Senate, both of which have said they'll stop CISPA dead in its tracks. Legislation is regularly passed in the House that has no chance of passing in the Senate, & in many cases if it did, it would also face a promised presidential veto -- besides feeling good, it shows the folks back home that they're working on their behalf, without much risk of it turning out to be bad law because it never will be law.
What bothers me about CISPA personally is that no one has ever come out & said why they need it, & who benefits, how -- that makes it different than most every other piece of proposed legislation politicians argue for or against on TV. An impressive roster of businesses have publicly come out for CISPA, & I've read several times that the data flow is expected to be more from biz to government than the other way around. Last minute changes to CISPA allegedly make privacy concerns irrelevant anonymizing data.
I'm not sure even the Congressional reps & senators know what CISPA is for -- despite bleeding edge departments here & there, the gov as a whole is pretty much tech ignorant. And so this whole thing concerns me... The NSA [along with comparable agencies in other, particularly allied governments] can already get its hands on pretty much any content &/or communication. Computer/network security experts & the companies they work for generally share threat data already -- there's nothing preventing anyone from sharing threat data now [unless the threat comes from their gov, e.g. Stuxnet] -- the US gov already freely advertises potential as well as real threat data. What exactly is in CISPA that nobody's telling us?
FWIW, here's what F/Book says: http://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-washington-dc/a-message-about-cispa/10150723305109455 -- what they don't say is why or how CISPA would enable sharing of threat data that should already be, appears already is shared. Critics like Gallagher bring up the lack of a good, publicly stated reason for CISPA, but then focus on privacy issues -- IMHO that's going for the low hanging fruit, citing obvious potential concerns rather than asking the hard questions, and without stating the obvious, that the gov is likely as interested in your personal data as they are in watching paint dry [yawn]. http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/04/19/mike_mccaul_cites_boston_bombing_as_a_reason_why_cispa_should_be_passed.html .
