Issa, Wyden Urge Congress to Enact Digital Bill of Rights

Issa and Wyden’s concept aims to outline 10 fundamental rights that should be protected by the U.S. government and offer guidance for legislation that affects the Web. “They are starting points that we hope Congress will accept,” Issa said. His initial draft would protect citizens’ rights to: a free, uncensored, open and unobstructed Internet; online equality; peaceful participation on the Web; freely sharing their ideas, lawful discoveries and opinions; equal access of the Web; free association; privacy; and to benefit from their intellectual property. Individuals are asked to comment or collaborate on the development of the concept via a website specifically created for doing so (http://xrl.us/bnbhm9).

The ultimate goal is to enact these items into law, Issa said. “The FCC needs to have a set of instructions that say these are the rights of people that the FCC has to observe when rulemaking. Because more of your freedoms will be taken from regulatory agencies than Congress will ever take directly.”

A digital bill of rights would help motivate opposition to legislation that could negatively affect the Web, said Wyden. “If we have something to measure all of these future proposals against, then we can get the word out to the community.” Wyden said half of Congress would support a digital bill of rights if he spent six months reaching out to grassroots organizations and then another few months to convince lawmakers. Issa said about a third of Congress would now support such a proposal.

There are some fundamental questions at stake in Congress’s effort to pass cybersecurity legislation, Wyden said. “I am concerned that there are people using this cyberthreat, which is a legitimate one, in effect to create what I call a cyber-industrial complex that preys on people’s fears and had a big appetite for private data. So what we have to do is step back and try to strike a balance between dealing with legitimate cyberthreats and not use cybersecurity legislation as a Trojan horse to basically sweep aside” privacy. Wyden said he plans to push for five or six additional provisions in any consideration of a Senate cybersecurity bill to narrow its focus and ensure a sunset provision.

Issa confirmed he’s still a supporter of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) but said he didn’t think HR-3523 is perfect. The National Security Agency, “all of the clandestine agencies, they are going to get a lot of information,” he said. “The question is, are we going to make sure that we know the rules of the road? ... My concern about CISPA is if we have no rules ... then the communication will all be one way. ... I want to make sure there is transparency in the process so people know if it is happening and can object to it."

Threats to a free and open Web aren’t just coming from Washington, Wyden said. International treaties like the TPP pose a “multinational threat” to privacy, said Wyden. There’s a lack of transparency in the negotiations over the TPP that gives the MPAA and RIAA “special rights” to the proposal that U.S. elected officials don’t have, Wyden said. “If this TPP is written badly, what could happen is all the wins that the people in this room have put together for Internet freedom ... could be unraveled.” Wyden introduced a bill last month to clarify the U.S. Trade Representative’s duty to share trade agreement information with all members of Congress.

Issa agreed and said the international debate over Internet freedom is more complicated than the debates on Capitol Hill. “The problem is these U.S. and foreign operations sometimes have an agenda like the people behind SOPA and PIPA in the copyright business who get into those and change how a standard is created,” Issa said. “You can’t just look at Washington. ... It is much harder to figure out what global groups [are involved], sometimes who don’t even invite people that ultimately would have a different view of what they are proposing to do until it is very far down the road.”