How would you feel about a voluntary version of Big Brother?

Hey, there’s no government mandate to share private information…but if you wanted to share such information with the government, well then that’s okay?

Electronic Frontier Foundation email: The House of Representatives is now poised to vote on the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), which would allow companies to monitor our online communications and share private information about users with the government. CISPA would let companies bypass all existing privacy law as long as they claim a "good faith" belief that they are doing so for cybersecurity purposes. These exemptions would allow a huge trove of data to end up in the government's hands with no judicial oversight.

House leadership is pushing for a vote on CISPA this week. CISPA Unlike the much maligned SOPA and PIPA bills that were shot down in January, CISPA has the support of numerous industry heavyweights, including Facebook, Microsoft and Intel.

Still, privacy advocates believe it is far too vague -- with room for Big Brother-type abuses.

It seems the party of small government is pushing for a “voluntary” version of Big Brother, with the help of corporate Democrats.

Fox News: CISPA is sponsored by Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., and Rep. C.A. Ruppersberger, D-Md. They claim it’s meant to prohibit Washington from forcing private companies to hand over information and to help American businesses protect their computer networks and intellectual property from cyber attacks.

But an open ended voluntary system is nothing short of frightening:

Electronic Frontier Foundation “Joel Kaplan, vice president-U.S. Public Policy for Facebook assured users that Facebook has 'no intention' of sharing private user data with the government,” wrote Rainey Reitman, activism director with the not-for-profit watchdog group. “But let’s be clear: Internet users don’t want promises from companies … we want strong laws that make such egregious privacy violations illegal.”