ACLU: CISPA Is Dead (For Now)

Sen. Jay Rockefeller says CISPA’s passage was “important,” but its “privacy protections are insufficient.”

by Jason Koebler
US News
April 25, 2013

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.

[READ: U.S. Military Writes Rules on Cybersecurity While Chinese Hacks Skyrocket]

“We’re not taking [CISPA] up,” the committee representative says. “Staff and senators are divvying up the issues and the key provisions everyone agrees would need to be handled if we’re going to strengthen cybersecurity. They’ll be drafting separate bills.”

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.”

That, coupled with the fact that President Barack Obama has threatened to veto the bill, has even CISPA’s staunchest opponents, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, ready to bury CISPA and focus on future legislation.

[READ MORE…]

[hat tip: Michael Yung Jai]