Senate Committee Passes Cybersecurity Bill that Could Broaden NSA Powers

Local Editor

The US Senate intelligence committee voted to adopt a major cybersecurity bill on Tuesday that critics fear will give the National Security Agency [NSA] even wider access to American data than it already has.

Pushed by Dianne Feinstein and Saxby Chambliss, the California Democrat and Georgia Republican who lead the committee, the bill would remove legal obstacles that block firms from sharing information "in real time" about cyber-attacks and prevention or mitigation measures with one another and with the US government.

In a meeting closed to the public, observers said the bill, approved by a 12 to 3 vote, would face a difficult time passing the full Senate, considering both the shortened legislative calendar in an election year and the controversy surrounding surveillance.

But digital rights advocates warn that the measure will give the government, including the NSA, access to more information than just that relating to cyberthreats, potentially creating a new avenue for broad governmental access to US data.

Gabriel Rottman, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, said that, the bill contains "catch-all provisions that would allow for the inclusion of a lot more than malicious code. It could include the content of communications. That's one of the biggest concerns."

Furthermore, two of the senators who voted against the bill, Democrats Ron Wyden of Oregon and Mark Udall of Colorado, said that they were prepared to work to improve the bill, which they said "lacks adequate protections for the privacy rights of law-abiding Americans, and that it will not materially improve cybersecurity."

They warned that, "We have seen how the federal government has exploited loopholes to collect Americans' private information in the name of security."

Worrying civil libertarians is that the NSA and its twin military command, US Cyber Command, would receive access to vast amounts of data, and privacy guidelines for the handling of that data are yet to be developed.

A draft of the bill released in mid-June would permit government agencies to share, retain and use the information for "a cybersecurity purpose," raising the prospect of the NSA stockpiling a catalogue of weaknesses in digital security, as a recent White House data-assurance policy permits.

It would also prevent participating companies from being sued for sharing data with each other and the government, even though many companies offer contract terms of service prohibiting the sharing of client or customer information without explicit consent.

Sources: News Agencies, Edited by website team