-
As expected, the U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday passed a controversial bill that aims to bolster the nation's defenses against cyber threats.
April 18 -
Legislative efforts to strengthen the nation's cyber defenses are shifting to the U.S. Senate after passage of a controversial bill by the House of Representatives.
April 19
House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Tex., said Wednesday he plans to introduce a bill that would clarify the Department of Homeland Security's role in receiving information about cyber threats from companies.
The aim of the measure would be to address concerns by some House members and privacy advocates with provisions of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, or CISPA, which the
The bill is expected to achieve that by tying a shield from liability that CISPA would extend to companies that share information about cyber threats with the government to the companies' providing the information to the Department of Homeland Security, as opposed to the nation's spy agencies.
"I also intend to develop a bill out of the committee on Homeland Security that deals with the role of DHS and the sharing of…cyber threat information with the private sector and critical infrastructures to better protect them, so that we don't see power grids coming down, financial infrastructures coming down," McCaul told MSNBC,
The measure would clarify an amendment McCaul offered during the House's debate on CISPA that made it into the final version. The amendment makes the Department of Homeland Security a collection point for cyber threat sharing but stops short of conditioning the liability shield on a company's funneling information directly to the department.
The additional bill could address concerns of CISPA's critics, who charge that CISPA would allow companies to bypass privacy laws and share people's emails and text message with the government's spy agencies.
"The McCaul amendment was a step in the right direction but it wasn’t ironclad," Michelle Richardson, legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, told American Banker. "That's why we fully support further legislation on this issue in the House."
McCaul's proposal also echoes a
The White House, which has threatened to veto CISPA in its current form, has said it stands ready to work with Congress to pass cybersecurity legislation.
McCaul says he has talked with the White House about cybersecurity. "I've actually worked with the White House on my amendment and also my bill, which I think is going to get more praise because it does have a civilian interface rather than military," he reportedly told MSNBC.
A spokeswoman for McCaul did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
The proposal comes as the legislative locus of cybersecurity
