Congress sneaks Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (the ‘new Patriot Act’) through in the new budget deal

Congress just passed the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) recently, sneaking it through in a budget bill to prevent a government shutdown before the holidays.

As reported in Wired, “CISA had alarmed the privacy community by giving companies the ability to share cybersecurity information with federal agencies, including the NSA. … That means CISA’s information-sharing channel, ostensibly created for responding quickly to hacks and breaches, could also provide a loophole in privacy laws that enabled intelligence and law enforcement surveillance without a warrant.”⁽¹⁾

It has been compared to the infamous Patriot Act because of its sinister surveillance content, and because it was passed without virtually anybody reading it.

The bill claims to help companies share information with the government to prevent cyber attacks, but in fact, it increases the U.S. government’s spying powers while doing little to increase corporate cyber security. There’s even a provision in CISA that might prevent the government from suing companies that don’t adhere to their own cyber threat policies.

Versions of CISA have been circulating for years, and the Obama administration even threatened to veto a similar bill in 2013. This time, however, the White House actually endorsed it.

As Natural News warns, it “will dwarf previous efforts by government to gather electronic information on all Americans without first obtaining a court-issued warrant as required by the Fourth Amendment.”⁽²⁾

(1) Wired.com

(2) NaturalNews.com