Motherboard (part of VICE - which you may know better from their new weekly news show on HBO) has an interesting interview with two hackers - Dragon and PhäntömZ - who run a stresser/booter company called Agony (a stresser/booter is a software or service that allows a user to flood a network). In the Interview the publication talks to the duo about Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, botnets, shells, black hat and white hat hackers, Anonymous, CISPA, and more.

Liberal-flavored site Burnt Orange Report sheds some light on a Texas bill sponsored by both Democrats and Republicans in the House that gives law enforcement in the state broad powers to look at private Internet data without much justification.

The bill was sponsored by Texas Republican Reps. John Frullo, Allen Fletcher, and John Carona; and Democratic Rep. Senfronia Thompson. House Bill 2268 is described as follows:

In April the House of Representatives managed to push the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) through the chamber, but shortly thereafter it stalled in the Senate. Leaders there said they weren't planning on taking the issue up, instead planning to focus on a number of separate bills to address issues related to cybersecurity concerns by the government and corporations.

Well, I guess we'll file this one under "better late than never." The White House has finally responded to a Petition signed by over 100,000 people asking the Administration to oppose the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act. While the bill easily passed the House, the Senate has decided that it will not create a counterpart to the bill in this year's session.

As Atlantic Wire points out in this article, and which we anticipated to be the case in this story earlier in the week CISPA is all but dead in the Senate as lawmakers in the upper House tackle issues they deem more important this year.

As pointed out by RT, even while the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) may have passed by a 288 to 127 margin in the House (and garnered more votes from Democrats this time around than it did in 2012 when it passed), the bill faces an unknown future in the Senate where other issues like Internet taxes, immigration and more are the causes getting priority right now..

Earlier this week the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) issued a statement on CISPA (which we admittedly missed) coming out strongly against the cybersecurity bill passed in the House yesterday afternoon.

As expected the House of Representatives has passed the controversial Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) by a vote of 288 to 127. Surprisingly, almost half of House Democrats supported the 196 Republicans in supporting the measure, despite President Barack Obama promising to veto the bill in its current state (lacking privacy protection and giving corporations blanket immunity from litigation).

Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI 3rd District) has increased his public critique of Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act in the last few days after an amendment that would have added more privacy protections to the bill were rejected in the House Rules Committee this week.

In an editorial penned for The Hill to convince members of congress to join him, Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kansas) says that the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) bill is a good thing. He extols the virtues of its commitment to the protection of Constitutional civil liberties and privacy because in Kansas protecting individual rights is in its citizens' "DNA."

While CISPA is likely to come up for a vote as soon as this afternoon or tomorrow, the White House has come out against it in a statement and has promised to veto it if it crosses President Barack Obama's desk in its current state.

Thirty-four civil liberties groups have signed onto a letter urging lawmakers in the House of Representatives to vote against the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) when it comes up for a vote on the floor either today or tomorrow. The letter lays out the collective groups' continued opposition to the bill after a secret markup hearing last week was held and amendments put forward that would have added privacy protections for Americans were soundly rejected by hearing members.

Representatives Anna G. Eshoo (CA), Rush Holt (NJ), Janice Schakowsky (IL) and Adam B. Schiff (CA) have written a "Dear Colleague" letter coming out strongly against the current version of CISPA, saying that the bill "has major shortcomings and would undermine the interests of citizens and their privacy."

The American Civil Liberties Union is calling its recent efforts to petition President Barack Obama to veto CISPA a smashing success, with 49,513 signatures so far. The civil liberties group also took out a full page ad on popular political website (found here) Politico yesterday urging members of Congress to oppose the controversial cybersecurity bill.

According to The Hill, IBM - as a strong supporter of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) - will send over 100 executives to Washington D.C. to hold nearly 300 meetings with lawmakers over a two-day period.

"We’re going to put our shoe leather where our mouth is," Chris Padilla, vice president of governmental affairs at IBM, told The Hill.

While (most, not all) Republicans seems to largely embrace and support the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISP) sponsored by congressman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.), Politico provides a ray of hope for those who oppose what rights groups are calling a slick "government surveillance" bill.

While Rep. Mike Roger rushes CISPA through a markup committee hearing this week, one Rep. is getting her own cybersecurity bill ready for a floor vote. While Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) called on the SEC to issue formal guidance on corporate disclosures related to cyber attacks, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) re-introduced the SECURE IT Act. Her bill is an alternative to the Senate's Cyber-Security Act of 2012 (S. 2105).

In a new video promoting opposition to CISPA, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian calls Google to talk about whether the search giant supports the CISPA legislation. Ultimately he doesn't get to talk to the CEO of that company. His calls to the CEOs of Twitter and Facebook bring similar results.

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) has made it out of its markup hearing in the House by a vote of 18-2. That means that the bill could be voted on by the full House on the floor as soon as next week. Worst still members of the committee overwhelmingly voted down an amendment that would have added some privacy provisions into the bill.

Even as Congress tackles the issue of crafting decent legislation to deal with cyberattacks (and no, CISPA is not decent legislation in its current form) in a secret "closed to the public" markup meeting, Techdirt has uncovered the fact that 27 companies have told the SEC that cyberattacks have had no impact. According to this Bloomberg report, 27 companies reported cyberattacks in SEC filings.

Just a friendly reminder: this week the House of Representatives will hold a mark-up meeting for the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) behind closed doors and hidden from the public.

On March 20 a coalition of advocacy groups, concerned citizens, academics, and web sites sent a letter to the White House urging the President of the United States to veto CISPA in its current state if it is passed by the House and Senate.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) details what information could be shared between government agencies, corporations and other entities if CISPA is ever passed and signed into law by President Barack Obama. With the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence set to mark the bill up next week, and the full House scheduled to vote on it the week after that, it is important that Internet users understand why this bill is bad news for them.

The Twitter account for Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) co-sponsor Mike Rogers deleted a retweet of an analysis of contributions to lawmakers from pro-CISPA companies from MapLight. The group looked at the House Intelligence Committee, where Rep. Rogers serves as Chairman, and followed campaign contributions to the members who are currently considering the bill.

A letter signed by 34 different organizations has been sent to the White House this week urging President Barack Obama to veto Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) if it crossed his desk this year. Last year the President promised to reject the House bill if it was not drastically overhauled to provide more privacy protections and remove some other elements like immunity from litigation for corporations that share information with the government.

Facebook is no longer listed as a supporter of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), according to this CNET report. Facebook and its CEO were singled out by activist group Demand Progress, who sent an avalanche of emails to CEO Mark Zuckerberg with the message:

The American Civil Liberties Union had a simple message for Congress today about CISPA or any other plans for sharing internet user information between corporations and government intelligence agencies: keep cybersecurity information sharing out of military hands.

The deadline for a petition submitted to the White House's "We The People" site to stop the passage of the newest version of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) is March 15, but the petition has already passed the 100,000 signature threshold needed for the White House to recognize it. The petition expresses concerns that citizens and privacy groups have over the privacy implications of the bill sponsored by Reps.

ReadWriteWeb has an excellent article that gathers the names of all of the organizations and individuals that are either for or against the newest draft of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or CISPA. While many technology and Internet firms are marked down as supporting the bill, a number of them do so as long as privacy concerns are addressed first.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has issued an action alert asking the Internet community to fight against the newest iteration of the Cyber Intelligence Protection and Sharing Act (CIPSA). While the it may be a new year the House bill meant to protect companies and critical infrastructure from cyber "terrorists," and hackers, the bill has not changed at all since it was introduced in 2012.