The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) threw cold water on...
The Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) threw cold water on a new House cybersecurity bill, HR-3523, and raised concerns about the privacy implications inherent in the legislation’s broad language. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, R-Mich., and Ranking Member…
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Dutch Ruppersberger, D-Md., introduced the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act on Wednesday, calling it a means to increase cyberthreat information sharing between national intelligence agencies and the private sector (WID Dec 1 p1). But CDT said it had four concerns with the bill: It has a “very broad, almost unlimited” definition of the information that can be shared with government agencies; it is likely to expand the government’s monitoring of private communications; it is likely to shift control of government cybersecurity efforts from civilian agencies to the military; and government agencies could feasibly use the information for any purpose, wrote Greg Nojeim, CDT’s senior counsel, in a blog post Thursday (http://xrl.us/bmjx7h). “The bill permits essentially unfettered sharing with the government and in particular with the military side of the government,” Nojeim said. Furthermore, the bill permits the Director of Intelligence to “use the certification process for government-to-private sharing in order to incentivize the private sector to share more with the military side of government without restrictions, thus expanding the role of the [Department of Defense] in private sector cybersecurity.” The criticism came prior to a House Select Committee on Intelligence markup of the bill on Thursday, which was closed to the public and press. The bill alternately got a boost from the Independent Telephone & Telecommunications Alliance, which represents mid-size local exchange carriers. The lawmakers have moved “aggressively ... to tackle daily threats to the nation’s broadband networks,” said alliance President Genny Morelli. Her members “spend substantial capital every day” protecting residential, business and government customers from cyberthreats, but “absent the ability for private network owners and the government to exchange intelligence on cyber threats, our national security and economic well-being will remain vulnerable to attack,” Morelli said. The leader of the House Republican Cyber Security Task Force, Rep. Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, confirmed his support for the legislation but told us he didn’t think “it’s going to be the final answer” (see separate report in this issue). Thornberry described the bill as a “good start” that “deals with one of the central issues we talked about in the task force and that is information sharing.”