Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2013/04/17/white_house_threatens_cispa_veto/
White House threatens to veto redrafted Cyber Intelligence act
Still too evil, insist presidential viziers
Posted in Legal, 17th April 2013 18:04 GMT
The White House has threatened to veto the re-animated Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) over privacy concerns.
It's deja vu all over again, as President Barack Obama's administration said that the bill needed to better protect civilians' privacy and reduce the protection from liability the new legislation would extend to companies.
"The Administration still seeks additional improvements and if the bill, as currently crafted, were presented to the president, his senior advisors would recommend that he veto the bill," the White House said in a statement.
The act is attempting to grease the wheels for sharing of cybersecurity information between private firms and different government bodies, but the new bill doesn't force companies to make an effort to remove irrelevant personal information when they pass data along, according to the White House.
In order to share potentially personal information, companies need some protection from privacy legislation and prosecution over private data, but the administration said the bill's current liability limitations were too broad.
The House of Representatives is expected to vote on CISPA later this week.
To try to push the bill through on the second pass, the Intelligence Committee has changed around a few things, including stopping firms from using information for anything other than cybersecurity and adding civil liberties oversight.
The act got cleared by the House last year in its original form, but was then scuppered by a Republican filibuster in the Senate. ®