Even though the President has vowed to veto the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) in its current form, the bill passed a vote in the House yesterday. Reuters describes the bill that went through: “The legislation allows federal agencies such as the National Security Agency, an intelligence agency that eavesdrops overseas and protects classified U.S. government computer networks, to share secret cyber threat information with American companies to help the private sector protect its networks.” The President and detractors in the House are worried, however, that CISPA’s wording doesn’t go into enough detail to protect the privacy of citizens. Again from Reuters: “Critics had raised privacy concerns that the sharing in return of “threat information” from private network operators to the government was so broad as to allow the NSA to effectively collect data on American communications, which is generally prohibited by law.”
The bill will have a much tougher time making its way through the Democratically controlled Senate, where a similar bill penned by Sen. Jay Rockefeller, has the President’s support.