The controversial cybersecurity bill, known, ever so gently as, the Cyber Information Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) - since it's for your own good - that passed the House last week
[3] looks set to be shelved in the Senate according to representatives. The bill would have allowed the federal government to share classified "cyber threat" information with companies, but it also provided provisions that would have allowed companies to share information about specific users with the government. Privacy advocates also worried, rightly so given previous experience, that the National Security Administration would have gotten involved. As US News reports [4], Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.V., chairman of the committee, said the passage of CISPA was "important," but said the bill's "privacy protections are insufficient." One of CISPA's staunchest opponents, the ACLU, added, "CISPA is too controversial, it's too expansive, it's just not the same sort of program contemplated by the Senate last year." While this is a short-term victory for everyone who uses the web, the ACLU warns, "we need to be vigilant as the year moves on to make sure that whatever the next product is, it's not CISPA- lite."
Via US News [5],
CISPA is all but dead, again.
The controversial cybersecurity bill known as the Cyber Information Sharing and Protection Act, which passed the House of Representatives last week, will almost certainly be shelved by the Senate, according to a representative of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.
The bill would have allowed the federal government to share classified "cyber threat" information with companies, but it also provided provisions that would have allowed companies to share information about specific users with the government. Privacy advocates also worried that the National Security Administration would have gotten involved.
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"We're not taking [CISPA] up," the committee representative says.
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Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.V., chairman of the committee, said the passage of CISPA was "important," but said the bill's "privacy protections are insufficient."
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"I think it's dead for now," says Michelle Richardson, legislative council with the ACLU. "CISPA is too controversial, it's too expansive, it's just not the same sort of program contemplated by the Senate last year. We're pleased to hear the Senate will probably pick up where it left off last year."
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But cybersecurity legislation in the Senate, such as the Cybersecurity and American Cyber Competitiveness Act of 2013, has greater privacy protections than CISPA does. Richardson says that bill makes it clear that companies would have to "pull out sensitive data [about citizens]" before companies send it to the government and also puts the program under "unequivocal civilian control," something CISPA author Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., was unwilling to do.
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Richardson says she thinks it'll be at least three months before the Senate takes a vote on any cybersecurity legislation.
"We need to be vigilant as the year moves on to make sure that whatever the next product is, it's not CISPA-lite," she says. "I think this is probably going to take the rest of the year."