Posted on 10/27/2015 6:33:48 AM PDT by GIdget2004
The Senate is on the cusp of passing its biggest cybersecurity bill to date, following years of debate and countless revisions to the contentious legislation.
The Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) would encourage companies to share their data on hackers with the government. With the House having already approved its companion legislation and the White House on board, the Senate’s is the final OK needed for Congress to enact its first major cybersecurity bill in years.
“We have been at this for six years,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a CISA co-sponsor, on the floor last week. “This is the third bill. We have been bipartisan.”
CISA backers, which include many industry groups and a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers, believe the bill is the necessary first step to better understand and stymie the mammoth hacks that have plagued U.S. retailers including Target and Home Depot, as well as government agencies including the Office of Personnel Management. But a vocal alliance of digital rights groups, tech companies and privacy-minded senators have led a late-surging campaign to block the bill, which they believe will shuttle more private data to the government without actually boosting cybersecurity.
But after months of delays on the bill, it appears the anti-CISA cohort has finally run out of options to further stall the upper chamber.
Leading critic Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and his colleagues opposing the bill will get their last shot at strengthening CISA’s privacy provisions on Tuesday.
Wyden remains hopeful he can cobble together a coalition to push through his preferred amendments — or halt the bill yet again.
(Excerpt) Read more at thehill.com ...
If Feinstein is for it, I am against it. We also don’t know what kind of riders are on it.
It’s the bits (bytes?) that are in the bill that aren’t being discussed that concern me.
Bet its full of PORK!
In last week’s cloture vote, every Republican except Rand Paul voted for it.
CISA is Not about improving cybersecurity.
It’s about more gov’t control.
EFF.org:
October 27, 2015 | By Mark Jaycox
EFF Opposes CISA as Final Vote Approaches
CISA, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, advanced in a procedural vote last week and will have its final vote today, Tuesday. EFF continues to strongly oppose the bill.
Today, the bill’s sponsors released an amendment previewing the final version of the bill. It’s the second time in as many days and it should be a sign to Senators that more debate is needed on CISA.
The edits fix routine spelling errors, but also delete important reports about cybersecurity—one report on the risks to critical infrastructure and another on the government’s adoption of security software. If CISA is really about protecting computer security, then the deletion of these reports is uncalled for.
Contrary to the claims of CISA supporters, the bill does not fix any core privacy concerns. For example, it does not require companies to affirmatively remove unrelated personal information before sharing any data. The bill also contains provisions making it worse than when it was first introduced since it allows any head of an agency to veto the Department of Homeland Security’s privacy procedures controlling how the government receives information from companies.
The new language further weakens the fundamentally flawed bill, which already suffers from broad immunity clauses, vague definitions, and aggressive spying authorities. Further, the bill does not address problems that caused the recent highly publicized computer data breaches like unencrypted files, poor computer architecture, un-updated servers, and employees (or contractors) clicking malware links.
Privacy organizations, companies, and computer scientists, including EFF, ACLU, Apple, Yelp, Symantec, Salesforce and Twitter oppose the bill. And thousands of emails and over 1 million faxes have been sent to Congress telling lawmakers to vote against it. Please join us today and tell your Senator to oppose the bill before the final vote.
For these reasons, EFF continues to oppose the bill.
Barry’s Millenial Lemming Army will NOT be pleased!
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