CISPA Probably Won't Be Introduced In the Senate

Alex Fitzpatrick2013-04-26 02:27:19 UTC

The House of Representative's version of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or CISPA, probably won't be taken up in its entirety by the Senate, according to a new report. CISPA passed the House last week with bipartisan support despite a veto threat from the White House.

"We're not taking [CISPA] up," an anonymous representative of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation told U.S. News and World Report. "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."

When reached for comment, commerce committee spokesperson Kevin McAlister emailed Mashable a previously issued statement from Chairman John D. Rockefeller (D-W.V.) saying he prefers an all-encompassing cybersecurity bill:

“Today’s action in the House is important, even if CISPA’s privacy protections are insufficient. We need action on all the elements that will strengthen our cybersecurity, not just one, and that's what the Senate will achieve. I plan to work with Senator Thune, as well as the Chairmen and Ranking Members on other Committees of jurisdiction, to go through regular order. I believe we can gain bipartisan agreement on bills that we can report out of our Committees and allow Leader Reid to bring them to the Senate floor as early as possible. There is too much at stake – our economic and national security – for Congress to fail to act.”

CISPA, which is designed to allow businesses and federal agencies to share cybersecurity threat information, certainly deals with commerce. However, the bill was actually referred to the Senate Intelligence Committee. When reached for comment by Mashable, Tom Mentzer, Press Secretary for Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), offered a Feinstein quote saying the committee is working on its own version of an information-sharing bill, corroborating what the anonymous source suggested.

"We are currently drafting a bipartisan information sharing bill and will proceed as soon as we come to an agreement," said Feinstein.

CISPA was long expected to stall in the Senate as it did last year, which is debating other approaches to cybersecurity. However, as the anonymous quote and various committee spokespersons indicate, some elements of CISPA may yet find new life in the Senate in other bills. Thus, it's not entirely fair to say CISPA as a whole is "dead" based on this report — but the odds that CISPA as passed by the House will make it through the Senate are near-zero.

Advocates for CISPA, mostly business interests, argue such sharing is necessary to deflect hackers in real time. Opponents of the bill argue it would compromise online privacy and afford undue liability protection to companies which share data with the government.

Is CISPA the right approach to cybersecurity legislation? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Image via iStockphoto, uschools

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