<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"Lest you doubt we are entering the age of a cybersecurity industrial complex\u2014and that such a system doesn't necessarily have the average Internet user in mind\u2014take look at the numbers.\nAccording to a new study by the lobbying group Center for Responsive Politics, lobbying reports that referenced \"cybersecurity\" more than doubled last year. Mentions jumped from 990 in 2011 to 1,968 in 2012.\nAnd where does that money go? In part, at least, to sponsor Internet bills that much of the public doesn't want. \nA different report by Maplight.org recently revealed that groups that lobby for the controversial Cyber Intelligence Security Protection Act (CISPA) give far more money to members of Congress than those who oppose it.\nThat study found that from July 2010 to June 2012, groups that openly support CISPA\u2014like Internet service providers, the Chamber of Commerce and IBM\u2014gave members of the House of Representatives members $55 million.\nDuring that same period, CISPA\u2019s opponents have given just $4 million to House members.\nCISPA is designed to help America fight against cyber attacks, and mostly accomplishes that through \"information sharing\"\u2014making it easy for companies and the government to share what they know. But Internet advocates say that means those companies would therefore be able to share your personal information with the government, bypassing existing privacy laws.\nWhile public opposition against CISPA still pales in comparison to the backlash against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in 2012, it's been steadily growing. In March, more than a 100,000 Americans signed an anti-CISPA White House petition. And it's been one of the few issues to trigger the Internet Defense League\u2014a loose coalition of websites with activist tendencies, like Craigslist\u2014to post anti-CISPA messages on their sites.\nCISPA did pass the House once before, in April 2012, but that was before many mainstream sites like Reddit announced formal opposition. The bill was never picked up in the Senate.\nMike Rogers (R-Mich.), CISPA's sponsor, has been pushing for such a bill for years, and has repeatedly insisted this will be the year it becomes law.\nThe 2013 version of the bill\u2014which is mostly the same as the previous one, though slightly amended\u2014is expected to go before a vote next week.\nCORRECTION: An earlier version of this story reflected a Maplight study that claimed the ACLU and EFF are among the groups that financially funded CISPA opposition. They do not, though both groups are vocal critics of the bill.\nImage via JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2013/04/11/cybersecurity-lobbying-doubled/>