UPDATED 14:20 EDT / APRIL 19 2013

CISPA Amendment Does Not Resolve Privacy Concerns

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act also known as CISPA, has been passed by the US House of Representatives with a 288 to 127.

During the House debate, supporters and detractors paint a colorful picture as to why the act should or should not be passed.  This milestone comes just after the House Intelligence Committee passed CISPA last week.

What’s interesting, though there are many that do not support CISPA, including President Barack Obama who reaffirming his stance against it just this week, the act seems to be well on its way to becoming a law, despite having asked legislators to build stronger protections for users into the bill. Since CISPA was authored, the number one issue has always been about consumer privacy and security.

On this morning’s Live News Desk Show with Kristin Feledy, SiliconANGLE contributing editor John Casaretto was asked if there were amendments made regarding CISPA and if so, does this address the core privacy criticisms.

“There were a lot of things that were thrown about, one of which was designed to ensure that the DHS – the Department of Homeland Security, would actually be the first recipient of any type of cyberthreat data from different companies throughout and that’s a civilian agency,” Casaretto stated.

“That would have answered one big criticism that people have out there, the privacy advocates in that, the information in that scenario would be shared directly with a unit of civilian agency as compared with the military and it would go that way first, but according to a bunch of reports that a lot of the amendments, the things that the privacy proponents wanted, have been stripped out before it was even brought to the floor.  Therefore, the one take on that specific change was it does not require companies to report only to the HDS…  It basically puts the DHS as a primary contact.  Very subtle nuances, not what privacy proponents wanted and the continued issue with the flaws in this legislation.”

CISPA was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives with a 248 to 168 vote last year, but the Senate did not approve it.  If CISPA once agains gets passed by all the Houses, then it would up to the Senate to make a law out of it.  Still, the President can veto CISPA if privacy issues are not amended properly.

Even with all these privacy issues, CISPA could be put into law especially if legislators use national threats to gain support.


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