What's the difference between CISPA and SOPA?

You may be wondering what this new house resolution called CISPA (H.R. 3523), that passed the house with 268 votes is. This is a new cyber security legislation.

This time, the premise of the law is to cover national security, it gives legal protections to corporations to share cybersecurity related information to the government voluntarily, without any legal repercussions.

Obviously, currently before this law, police and government would use warrants to get such information as declared in the 4th amendment of the constitution.

However, with this law, they will no longer need warrants. They can just ask for information, and the companies will provide the information they request on whatever premise (be it theft, copyright infringement, hacking), and no one can sue those corporations for giving up their private information.

This is not like SOPA which was more of a firewall for sites that steal content or infringe copyrights. Instead it is more related to national security, cyber security, and sharing of private information between government and private companies.

The following image covers some of the details: