Senate Passes Cyber Bill, Ducking Privacy Fears for Now

Des­pite howls of protest from pri­vacy ad­voc­ates, the Sen­ate on Tues­day passed le­gis­la­tion aimed at bol­ster­ing the na­tion’s de­fenses against hack­ers.

The Cy­ber­se­cur­ity In­form­a­tion Shar­ing Act, or CISA, passed the Sen­ate 74-21.

Since the House earli­er this year passed two dif­fer­ent ver­sions of a cy­ber-in­form­a­tion-shar­ing bill, law­makers from the Senate and House will have to come to­geth­er in a con­fer­ence to align their ver­sions of the le­gis­la­tion in­to a fi­nal, uni­fied ver­sion of the bill that will need to be passed again by both cham­bers be­fore it can be signed in­to law.

Op­pos­i­tion to the bill, which would provide in­cent­ives to private busi­nesses to share in­form­a­tion about on­line threats with each oth­er and with the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, was led by the Sen­ate’s pri­vacy hawks—Ron Wyden, Patrick Leahy, and Al Franken—and backed by civil liber­ties groups and tech com­pan­ies who were un­happy with the bill’s pri­vacy pro­tec­tions.

Continue reading at http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2015/10/senate-passes-cyber-bill-ducking-privacy-fears-now/123207/?oref=defenseone_today_nl.