Senate Intelligence Committee Advances Terrible “̶C̶y̶b̶e̶r̶s̶e̶c̶u̶r̶i̶t̶y̶”̶ ̶B̶i̶l̶l̶ Surveillance Bill in Secret Session
BY MARK JAYCOX
EFF.org
MARCH 19, 2015
The Senate Intelligence Committee advanced a terrible cybersecurity bill called the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015 (CISA) to the Senate floor last week. The new chair (and huge fan of transparency) Senator Richard Burr may have set a record as he kept the bill secret until Tuesday night. Unfortunately, the newest Senate Intelligence bill is one of the worst yet.
Cybersecurity bills aim to facilitate information sharing between companies and the government, but their broad immunity clauses for companies, vague definitions, and aggressive spying powers make them secret surveillance bills. CISA marks the fifth time in as many years that Congress has tried to pass “cybersecurity” legislation. Join us now in killing this bill.
The newest Senate Intelligence bill joins other cybersecurity information sharing legislation like Senator Carper’s Cyber Threat Sharing Act of 2015. All of them are largely redundant. Last year, President Obama signed Executive Order 13636 (EO 13636) directing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to expand current information sharing programs. In February, he signed another Executive Order encouraging regional cybersecurity information sharing and creating yet another Cyber Threat Center. Despite this, members of Congress like Senators Dianne Feinstein and Richard Burr continue to introduce bills that would destroy privacy protections and grant new spying powers to companies.
New Countermeasures and Monitoring Powers
The Rest…HERE