A US Senate committee has finally approved the CISA (formerly called Cispa, which gives US agencies the right to collect your records from the internet without needing warrants).
The meeting was held behind closed doors last Thursday, and the Senate Intelligence Committee quietly passed the controversial bill, which makes it easier for companies to share their users' information with government agencies, thus avoiding the need for warrants.
Senator Ron Wyden was the only lawmaker to vote against the new bill, stating that the measure:
“does not provide adequate protection measures for the privacy rights of American consumers, and that it will have a limited impact on US cybersecurity.”
So despite privacy concerns, the committee passed the bill allowing US companies to share information relevant to security breaches with any government agency.
The Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) was approved almost unanimously with 14 positive and 1 negative votes, as reported by CNET.
“This bill (CISA) is critically important both for our agencies that keep our country safe, and for the companies that hold millions of Americans’ personal information,” said Republican Senator Richard Burr, the committee chairman.
The committee passed a similar bill last year with 12 votes in favor and 3 against, but they met with an impasse when privacy advocates began their protests.
The bill is, of course, directly linked by the US government to the increase in cyberattacks against businesses and organizations in the country. Obama has approved $14 billion in the 2016 budget proposal to strengthen US efforts against such attacks. Last month, the Obama administration also announced the creation of a new government agency, the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center, which will collect, classify, integrate, and combine all the information from the various intelligence agencies.
In other words, a specialized center that will collect information from the services that collect it. It will classify it and redirect it to any interested party. The future of the internet…..
