Thread: CISPA plan to let feds receive confidential data wins big House vote

CISPA plan to let feds receive confidential data wins big House vote

The odds of a Democrat-controlled Senate approving legislation opposed by President Obama are slim, but today's vote could increase pressure for some sort of legislation this year.
by Declan McCullagh
April 18, 2013 10:20 AM PDT

CISPA author Rep. Mike Rogers (left), who successfully navigated his legislation through the House of Representatives despite ongoing privacy concerns.
(Credit: Getty Images)
The U.S. House of Representatives has overwhelmingly approved a controversial data-sharing bill that would authorize e-mail and Internet providers to share confidential information with the federal government.
By a 288-127 vote today, the House adopted the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, better known as CISPA, which supporters say is necessary to protect American networks from electronic attacks and intrusions. The vote signals more support for the bill than it enjoyed last year, when it cleared the House by a narrower margin but died in the Senate. (See CNET's CISPA FAQ.)
CISPA is "so important to our national security" that it must be adopted, said Rep. Mike Rogers, a Michigan Republican who authored CISPA and heads the House Intelligence Committee.
"This is not a surveillance bill," Rogers said during the floor debate. "It does not allow the national security agencies or the Department of Defense or our military ... to monitor our domestic networks."
CISPA Excerpts

Excerpts from the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act:
"Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a self-protected entity may, for cybersecurity purposes -- (i) use cybersecurity systems to identify and obtain cyber threat information to protect the rights and property of such self-protected entity; and (ii) share such cyber threat information with any other entity, including the Federal Government...
The term 'self-protected entity' means an entity, other than an individual, that provides goods or services for cybersecurity purposes to itself."

The discussion now shifts to the Democrat-controlled Senate, which appears unlikely to act on the legislation in the wake of a presidential veto threat earlier this week, and an executive order in January that may reduce the need for new legislation. Today's House vote, on the other hand, could increase pressure on the Senate to enact some sort of legislation.
Sen. John Rockefeller, a West Virginia Democrat who was involved in last year's cybersecurity debate, said after today's vote that "CISPA's privacy protections are insufficient." Still, Rockefeller said, "I believe we can gain bipartisan agreement on bills that we can report out of our committees and allow [Majority Leader Harry Reid] to bring them to the Senate floor as early as possible."
Today's vote left opponents deeply unsatisfied, in large part because privacy-protective amendments were rejected or not permitted to be offered. One unsuccessful amendment (PDF) would have ensured companies' privacy promises -- including their terms of use and privacy policies -- remained valid and legally enforceable in the future. Another would have curbed police ability to conduct warrantless searches of CISPA-shared data.
CISPA is controversial because it overrules all existing federal and state laws by saying "notwithstanding any other provision of law," including privacy policies and wiretap laws, companies may share cybersecurity-related information "with any other entity, including the federal government." It would not, however, require them to do so.
That language has alarmed dozens of advocacy groups, including the American Library Association, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Reporters Without Borders, which sent a letter (PDF) to Congress last month opposing CISPA. It says: "CISPA's information sharing regime allows the transfer of vast amounts of data, including sensitive information like Internet records or the content of e-mails, to any agency in the government." President Barack Obama this week threatened to veto CISPA.
Related posts

• CISPA permits police to do warrantless database searches
• CISPA vote means companies can't promise to protect privacy
• Obama threatens veto of CISPA database-sharing bill
• Google, Yahoo, Microsoft execs back CISPA through trade group
• Privacy protections booted from CISPA data-sharing bill

Rep. Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, said CISPA remained problematic because there was no requirement that private sector firms remove personal information before sharing it with the federal government, and a civilian agency -- not the military or the National Security Agency -- should be in charge of receiving voluntarily shared data.
"The NSA could share data with law enforcement to investigate computer crimes -- which is so broad it includes lying about your age on your Facebook page," said Rep. Hank Johnson, a Georgia Democrat. That's a reference to the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, which was used to prosecute the late Aaron Swartz and a Missouri woman accused of lying on her MySpace profile.
CISPA's advocates say it's needed to encourage companies to share more information with the federal government, especially in the wake of an increasing number of successful and attempted intrusions, and to a lesser extent among themselves. A "Myth v. Fact" paper (PDF) prepared by the House Intelligence Committee says any claim that "this legislation creates a wide-ranging government surveillance program" is a myth.




April 18, 2013 | By Dave Maass and Mark M. Jaycox


U.S. House of Representatives Shamefully Passes CISPA; Internet Freedom Advocates Prepare for a Battle in the Senate



Today, Internet freedom advocates everywhere turned their eyes to the U.S. House of Representatives as that legislative body considered the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act.
For the second year in a row, the House voted to approve CISPA, a bill that would allow companies to bypass all existing privacy law to spy on communications and pass sensitive user data to the government. EFF condemns the vote in the House and vows to continue the fight in the Senate.
"CISPA is a poorly drafted bill that would provide a gaping exception to bedrock privacy law,” EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kurt Opsahl said. “While we all agree that our nation needs to address pressing Internet security issues, this bill sacrifices online privacy while failing to take common-sense steps to improve security."
The legislation passed 288-127, despite a veto threat from Pres. Barack Obama, who expressed serious concerns about the danger CISPA poses to civil liberties.
"This bill undermines the privacy of millions of Internet users,” said Rainey Reitman, EFF Activism Director. “Hundreds of thousands of Internet users opposed this bill, joining the White House and Internet security experts in voicing concerns about the civil liberties ramifications of CISPA. We’re committed to taking this fight to the Senate and fighting to ensure no law which would be so detrimental to online privacy is passed on our watch.”
EFF extends its deep gratitude to the many organization that have worked with us on this campaign and the tens of thousand of EFF members who helped us by contacting Congress to oppose CISPA. We look forward to continuing to fight by your side in defense of civil liberties as CISPA moves to the Senate.

House Votes To Legitimize More Government Computer Snooping

April 24, 2013 by Bob Livingston

PHOTOS.COM

No amount of online spying is too much, said the criminal elected class in the House of Representatives, as it passed the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and (non)Protection Act (CISPA) yesterday over hollow veto threats by the Administration of President Barack Obama.

The bill will give the government access to online data — including financial data — from private computer networks. A proposal that would have prohibited the military from collecting data directly from industry was blocked from floor debates by Republicans. A compromise measure was passed that ensures companies must first go through the Department of Homeland Security before turning information over the military.

Privacy groups object to the bill because they said it would give the National Security Agency “a front-row seat in analyzing data from private computer networks.” The Associated Press reports that the bill doesn’t address NSA specifically, but “it’s presumed that the military intelligence agency would have a central role in the data-sharing because of its technical expertise in tracking foreign-based hackers.”

Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), who once lamented that the Internet had been created and longed to return to the days of pencil and paper, will take the lead in pushing CISPA through the Senate.

The proposal that puts DHS in charge of disseminating the information between corporations and the military was supposed to be comforting. But considering the DHS’s record regarding electronic privacy, it’s no comfort at all. Recall that for years DHS claimed the naked body scans taken by backscatter radiation emitters at airports were not stored, and the machines were not capable of storing images. Finally, after lawsuits filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center made their way through the courts, it was revealed that DHS did indeed store the images and that Transportation Security Administration agents used them for all sorts of nefarious purposes.

The Administration’s veto threats ring hollow because it has yet to find a liberty-reducing law it could oppose (see the National Defense Authorization Act). But we should be thankful, because our safety is of foremost concern among the criminal elected class.

Filed Under: Conservative Politics, Freedom Watch, Hot Topics

http://personalliberty.com/2013/04/2...uter-snooping/

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