You are especially likely to become numb to calls to arms when they are in fact cries of "wolf".
SOPA was a genuinely invasive bill and a clear power grab by the content industry. It created a new special second-class "tainted" designation for content sites that refused to play ball with rightsholders and gave rightsholders new means to prosecute their rights outside of civil courts. It was understandable and --- even though I'm a supporter of copyright in general --- commendable that organized opposition to SOPA killed that bill outright.
CISPA is nothing like SOPA.
To begin with, CISPA has none of the same objectives of SOPA. It isn't about the content industry at all. In fact, when early opposition to CISPA by organizations like EFF started catching on, its sponsors scrubbed the bill of language that could have been read (in a stretch) as protecting rightsholders. CISPA is about online security attacks, not about piracy.
Next, CISPA isn't invasive. SOPA threatened to create a kangaroo court system of copyright-noncompliant sites that the content industry could starve by banning commercial transactions with them. CISPA is an opt-i bill; the USG cannot compel any organization to cooperate with any USG agency, but instead creates a facility that companies can use if they need to share attack information but don't want to spend $100,000 in ECPA-interpreting legal review each time they do it.
In fact, CISPA in practice probably has more to do with information moving FROM the USG TO private companies. The USG spends hundreds of millions of dollars a year monitoring its networks (which together constitute the largest IT organization in the world). It is true that the largest IT org in the world happens to be a shitty IT shop, but it has nevertheless built up about a decade of experience tracking malware and botnets and DOS attack information; when Blaster broke out, the experience of the Naval Marine Corp Intranet getting overrun by it was some of the first shared among ISPs. All sorts of random rules prevent USG IT shops from running any kind of central clearinghouse of attack information, and still more rules prevent any of that information from being published.
I don't particularly like CISPA. It obviously sounds like I do, but that's because the uninformed paranoia about CISPA is so virulent that any measured take on the bill sounds like cheerleading. I don't care whether CISPA passes or doesn't pass. But it drives me a little bananas to see how easily the ostensibly curious and well-informed people on HN are bamboozled by identity politics on issues like this.
It's a tiny bill, as bills go. Just go read it.