The US House of Representatives has passed the controversial Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protect Act (CISPA).
Lawmakers in the House voted 288-to-127 Thursday afternoon to accept the bill. Next it will move to the Senate and could then end up on the desk of US President Barack Obama for him to potentially sign the bill into law. Earlier this week, though, senior White House advisers said they would recommend the president veto the bill.
Should CISPA earn the president’s autograph, private businesses will be encouraged to voluntarily share cyberthreat information with the US government. The authors of the bill say this is an effort to better combat the reportedly increasing attempts to harm America’s critical computer networks and pilfer the systems of private companies for intellectual property and other sensitive trade secrets.
One of the bill’s creators, Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Maryland), said during a round of debate on Wednesday that $400 billion worth of American trade secrets are being stolen by US companies every year. Passing CISPA, he said, would be a common sense solution to a threat that’s growing at an alarming rate.
“If your house is being robbed, you call 911 and the police department comes. That’s the same scenario we are looking at here,” he said.
That same day, CISPA co-author Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Michigan) stressed that his bill doesn't extend any extra surveillance powers to the federal government, despite condemnation from critics that say exactly that. “It does something very simple: it allows the government to share zeroes and ones with the private sector,” he said.
“We have yet to find a single United States company that opposes this bill,” said Rep. Rogers.
But companies do in fact oppose CISPA, including a number of entities that carry a good deal of clout around both Silicon Valley and inside the beltway. Just last month Facebook rescinded their support of the act, according to Cnet’s Declan McCullagh, because a spokesperson for the social media site says they prefer a legislative“balance” that ensures “the privacy of our users.”
After CISPA was unsuccessfully introduced to Congress last year — only to stall in the Senate — Microsoft endorsed the act only to eventually do an about-face.
“Microsoft believes that any proposed legislation should facilitate the voluntary sharing of cyber threat information in a manner that allows us to honor the privacy and security promises we make to our customers,” the company’s Scott Charney told McCullagh at the time.
But just last week, TechNet President Rey Ramsey sent a letter to Reps. Rogers and Ruppersberger saying his group thinks CISPA “recognizes the need for effective cybersecurity legislation that encourages voluntary, bi-directional, real time sharing of actionable cyberthreat information to protect networks,” but that further work may be needed. TechNet’s Executive Council includes Yahoo’s Marissa Mayer, Google’s Eric Schmidt and Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith.
Web browser makers Mozilla oppose the bill, as does the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the American Civil Liberties Union, and last year’s attempt to pass CISPA after it was unveiled for a first time prompted the White House to issue a veto warning then. In the months since the bill stalled in the Senate, though, the president has on his own part urged Congress to adopt a new cybersecurity bill.
In February, Pres. Obama signed an executive order that urges his administration to begin working towards improving cybersecurity protections until Congress can craft a bill. Hours later, he said during his annual State of the Union address how imperative legislation action is.
“Earlier today, I signed a new executive order that will strengthen our cyber defenses by increasing information sharing, and developing standards to protect our national security, our jobs and our privacy. Now, Congress must act as well, by passing legislation to give our government a greater capacity to secure our networks and deter attacks,” the president said.
But in the veto threat extended by his office earlier this week, the White House writes, “the Administration still seeks additional improvements and if the bill, as currently crafted, were presented to the President, his senior advisors would recommend that he veto the bill.”
During Thursday morning’s debate, one elected lawmaker cited this week’s deadly terrorist attack in Boston as a reason to pass a cybersecurity bill, despite lacing evidence that the pair of bombs detonated Monday at the Boston Marathon were acts of cyberterror.
“Recent events in Boston demonstrate that we have to come together as Republicans and Democrats” in order to pass a bill that will strengthen national security, Rep. Mike McCaul (R-Texas) said Thursday morning.
“In the case of Boston,” said McCaul, “there were real bombs.”
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