CISPA: Maybe not such a bad idea...

I read an interesting article on Mashable this evening and apparently the CISPA bill passed the house with amendments. I understand that many people are worried about their personal information being shared with private companies and the federal government to prevent cyber-attacks. But I feel like this is one of those situations where relenting some of our privacy can be used to prevent problems in the future.

Cyber-attacks on large websites can often be problematic and cause major problems for the company that owns the site. Several years ago one of the larger banks in the U.S. suffered a cyber-attack and customer’s personal information such as credit card numbers was compromised. The bank was forced to send out new credit cards to all of its members.

This type of bill could also provide more security to online journalism sites in the future as they continue to grow and evolve. Pay walls are becoming common place for online news sites like the New York Times and Chicago Tribune. A cyber-attack on a news website, similar to the one experienced by the aforementioned bank, could destroy online news altogether. It would be difficult if not impossible for news organizations to recover from a cyber-attack.