The incentive and the framework it creates is for companies to quickly and massively collect user information and ship it to the government. As soon as you do, you obtain broad immunity, even if you ve violated privacy law.
— Mark Jaycox, legislative analyst for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, reacts to the Senate s passage of CISA (Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act) Tuesday. CISA, which provides more incentive for companies to share information about cyber security threats with the government, was opposed by companies such as Apple, Facebook, Google and others. The tech companies and civil liberties groups say the bill, which would ask companies to share information with the Department of Homeland Security — which could then pass along that information to other government agencies — threatens user privacy. Proponents of the bill say the measure is all about security, and the information sharing would be voluntary.
The Senate will now have to work with the House on reconciling their measures. The House passed a similar measure, the Protecting Cyber Networks Act, in April.
CISA, which was co-sponsored by Sen. Diane Feinstein, D-Calif., is basically a rehash of a previous bill called the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act. President Obama threatened to veto CISPA, which a couple of years ago inspired protests such as Internet blackouts. But this time around, the Obama administration supports CISA, reportedly because it contains restrictions on sharing.
After the Senate s passage of CISA, critics say the lawmakers don t understand security and technology. More from an EFF blog post Tuesday:
The passage of CISA reflects the misunderstanding many lawmakers have about technology and security. Computer security engineers were against it. Academics were against it. Technology companies, including some of Silicon Valley s biggest like Twitter and Salesforce, were against it. Civil society organizations were against it. And constituents sent over 1 million faxes opposing CISA to Senators.
And here s a statement from Fight for the Future:
[Lawmakers] have voted to make utter fools of themselves and proved that they have absolutely no clue how to prevent cyber attacks. By supporting a bill that has been resoundingly rejected by security experts, tech companies, and advocacy groups from across the political spectrum, these politicians have highlighted the brokenness of our political system and exposed the reality that U.S. Congress is one of the Internet s greatest foes.
Photo of Sen. Diane Feinstein, a co-sponsor of CISA, from Getty Images
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