Wyden: Cybersecurity Legislation Threatens Privacy; Experts Say Does Little To Prevent Security Breaches
“I reject the notion that corporate privacy is more important than individual privacy”; “This is a bad excuse to try and pass a bad bill”
Washington, D.C. –Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., today pushed back on calls to pass a flawed cybersecurity bill (the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act or CISA) in response to revelations that a federal employee database was recently hacked.
“The United States should pull out all the stops to go after foreign hackers and foreign threats, but there’s a way to do that without threatening the privacy of millions of law-abiding Americans,” Wyden said.
“The so-called cybersecurity legislation in the Senate creates new ways for the government to sift through Americans’ private information without a warrant, and lacks the privacy protections necessary to safeguard private data. Even worse, the bill gives corporations blanket immunity for providing information to the federal government, and would prohibit that data from being used to regulate those corporations, but it would allow federal law-enforcement agencies to go after Americans for unrelated crimes based on this data. I reject the notion that corporate privacy is more important than individual privacy.
“Finally, although I believe sharing information about cyber-threats is a worthy goal, it is unlikely that information sharing by private companies would have made any significant difference in protecting federal employee data. That’s why cybersecurity experts say that passing a bill like this will do little to reduce security breaches.
“This is a bad excuse to try and pass a bad bill.”
Wyden was the only member of the Senate Intelligence Committee to vote against CISA, which is expected to come to the Senate floor in coming weeks.
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