WASHINGTON, Oct. 27 (UPI) — The U.S. Senate on Tuesday is expected to pass a controversial bipartisan cybersecurity bill designed to increase information-sharing between the government and businesses.
The long-stalled Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, or CISA, has been criticized by privacy advocates as the solution to a non-existent problem.
The legislation allows corporations to share suspicious activity on privately owned networks without fear of litigation if personal data is inadvertently released. Whether privacy laws inhibit the amount of shared information is doubted by some. The sheer volume of data the CISA law proposes sharing would require machines with filtering algorithms, increasing the chance personal data could be released and hampering security.
The law, sponsored by Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., is a product of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and not of the Commerce or Homeland Security committees. The Department of Homeland Security currently has a system to monitor cyberthreats on public and private networks, the Computer Emergency Readiness Team, or DHS-CERT.
“As Richard Burr has admitted in recent days, CISA won’t do what it was originally sold as doing, preventing cyberattacks on the government or private companies,” Marcy Wheeler, a writer on cybersecurity issues, told Al Jazeera. She added Burr said the legislation would only “limit the damage” from such an attack.
“None of CISA’s proponents have explained how DHS-CERT is so deficient in its mission that yet another ‘information portal’ needs to be created,” wrote former CIA analyst Patrick Eddington for the New York University School of Law forum Just Security.
The White House has offered qualified support for the bill, and Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., also supports it but has called it “far too weak.”
“We must do more to protect ourselves against this cyberterrorism.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., also expressed a desire to see the bill passed, commenting from the Senate floor, “Everyone understands that a cyberattack can be financially crippling, that’s why everyone should want to see the bipartisan cybersecurity bill before us today be passed.”
