Congress Reportedly Slipping CISA Spy Bill Into Must-Pass Omnibus

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., issued the following statement Wednesday on the latest version of the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, which has been included in the omnibus appropriations bill.

After the Senate passed its Intelligence Committee-originated version in October, lawmakers have been trying meld that rule with two similar versions that recently passed in the House-amounting to a bill which critics warn is completely gutted of any privacy protections.

Instead of reconciling the House and Senate versions of CISA and sending a separate bill to the president’s desk to consider, however, legislators folded the measure into a massive spending bill that Congress must pass to avoid a government shutdown. Because it’s such a critical measure, the spending bill is nearly guaranteed to be passed and signed into law by the president, meaning so too is CISA.

Information-sharing legislation has failed in Congress for years amid privacy advocates’ concerns about broadening the surveillance of USA citizens by giving more data to the National Security Agency, the government’s electronic snooping department.

The Department of Homeland Security will take the lead collecting and disseminating the information, as appropriate, as well as managing the creation of Information Sharing and Analysis Organizations (ISAOs).

Companies are also assured they won’t face liability for not acting on information received. Just before its release early Wednesday morning, a bipartisan group of four lawmakers circulated a letter complaining that the bill’s provisions were being finalized behind closed doors.

Negotiated in secret and tucked in legislation thousands of pages long, Congress is about to pass an bad surveillance bill under the guise of “cybersecurity” that could open the door to the NSA acquiring much more private information of Americans.

The provisions in the omnibus spending bill likely to be approved this week “are unlikely to increase the government’s ability to detect, intercept, and thwart cybersecurity attacks, yet would decrease accountability and public trust”, a letter from four conservative groups – FreedomWorks, Niskanen Center, R Street Institute and TechFreedom – to House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) claimed.

“Congress has chosen to advance legislation that places the privacy of Americans in further peril”, said Neema Singh Guliani, legislative counsel with the American Civil Liberties Union.

“The bill is very protective of privacy while also doing a lot to help companies protect themselves from cyberattack”, Schiff said.

That phrase, part of the privacy advocate-preferred House Homeland bill, did not make the final cut.

Proponents countered that such fears are overblown, describing the exceptions as narrowly tailored and considerably slimmed down from previous iterations of the bill.

“This is not a controversial bill whatsoever”, Nunes insisted, referencing the large margins by which each individual bill passed.