Blog - Articles Tagged 'Cybersecurity'

Remember the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) and its language "affirming" the military's power to indefinitely detain anyone, including U.S. citizens, without charge or trial? Well, the 2013 NDAA bill begins its journey through the legislative process tomorrow morning in the House Armed Services Committee; take a look at what power they'll be trying to affirm for the Defense Department this time around:

After indicating that they may veto the House's cybersecurity bill (CISPA) over privacy concerns, the Obama Administration is reaffirming its support for a competing cybersecurity bill in the Senate, the Lieberman-Collins "Cybersecurity Act of 2012." Problem is, the Lieberman-Collins bill is nearly as bad on privacy as CISPA.

In a snap vote last night, the House of Representatives passed the controversial Cyberintelligence Sharing and Protection Act, more commonly known as CISPA. The final roll call was 248-168, with most of the Republicans voting in favor and most of the Democrats voting against.

One of the things that became clear in Congress’ push to pass Hollywood’s web censorship bills is that powerful corporations and the federal government do not want the rule of law to apply on the internet. The attitude that our basic freedoms and legal protections are somehow not valid on the internet is partly just the kind of reaction you would expect from entrenched powers whenever new technologies emerge, but it’s also a response to the particular peer-to-peer features of the internet that threaten to make their key sources of power -- control of information flow -- less relevant.

Joe Lieberman's [I-CT] controversial cybersecurity bill, the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010, was approved by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs this afternoon. Though some senators on the committee raised concerns over certain sections, today's committee action means that the bill will now move to the Senate floor.

Several bills to address cybersecurity lapses have been introduced in this session of Congress only to stall over concerns that they would give the President broad powers to step in and shut down access to the internet at will. But Sen. Joe Lieberman [I, CT] is taking another stab at writing a bill that he thinks can move forward and become law. He recently introduced the bipartisan Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010, but does it do enough to assure that civil liberties will be protected in the case of an emergency?

Last April, Sen. Jay Rockefeller [D, WV], the Chairman of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee, introduced the Cybersecurity Act of 2009 to his committee. The goal of the bill was to develop a public-private plan for strengthening national security in the case of internet-based attacks. But it stalled almost immediately because of a controversial provision that would have give the President unilateral authority to declare a cybersecurity emergency and then shut down or limit access to parts of the internet without any oversight or explanation.

A couple weeks ago, Sen. Rockefeller partnered with Sen. Olympia Snowe [R, ME] to introduce a major revision to the bill that, among other things, made changes the emergency "kill switch" provision. The revision was adopted by the committee last Thursday and the bill was approved. It's now ready for consideration by the full Senate, but it's not clear that the revision would actually prevent the President from gaining basically the same powers that would have been given to him in the original bill.

Congress has been working to improve U.S. cybersecurity for almost a year. The House of Representatives today actually began debating a bill, and they're on route to pass it tomorrow and send it to the Senate. Click through what's in it and what it would do.