Guardian - The Senate intelligence committee advanced a priority bill for the National Security Agency, approving long-stalled cybersecurity legislation that civil libertarians consider the latest pathway for surveillance abuse.
The vote on the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, 14 to 1, occurred in a secret session inside the Hart Senate office building. Democrat Ron Wyden was the dissenter, calling the measure “a surveillance bill by another name”...
Private companies could share customer data “in a voluntary capacity” with the government, Burr said, “so that we bring the full strength of the federal government to identifying and recommending what anybody else in the United States should adopt”...
Feinstein said the bill’s provisions would “only be used for counterterrorism purposes and certain immediate crimes”...
The bill faces strong opposition inside and outside Congress. Beyond expanding government’s reach into private data outside warrant requirements, it mandates real-time access to that data for intelligence agencies and the military. ‘Significantly undermine privacy and civil liberties’
Privacy advocates consider the bill to provide a new avenue for the NSA to access consumer and financial data, once laundered through the Department of Homeland Security, the initial public repository for the desired private-sector information. Campaigners consider the emphasis placed by the bill’s backers on DHS’s role to be a misleading way of downplaying NSA access to win congressional support.
A coalition of nearly 50 technologists, privacy groups and campaigners wrote to the committee earlier this month urging rejection of a bill that would “significantly undermine privacy and civil liberties” and potentially permit corporations to “hack back” at perceived network intrusions. Wikimedia joins civil rights groups in lawsuit against NSA internet spying Read more
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