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A Guide To the 5 Cybersecurity Bills Now Before Congress

Posted by Soulskill on from the better-know-a-bill dept.

blottsie writes: At press time, the House had passed two cybersecurity bills, one Senate bill had been passed out of committee and reported to the full chamber for a final vote, and a third House bill and a second Senate bill were awaiting review by the appropriate committee. The two House bills that passed earlier this week will be combined and sent to the Senate, but the Senate won't take up them up directly; instead, it will vote on its own two bills. It's complicated, so here's a quick breakdown of the key details.

17 comments

  1. TLDR by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That's the "short" version? Yeesh. Anyway, here's what that article was trying to say:

    Two things are likely to pass:
    1) Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act: Lets Homeland Security invent regulations to let companies and governments at all levels share data about people. Good for law enforcement, bad for privacy and civil rights, good for corporations who share too much trying to please the government (because of a liability shield).
    2) Something else similar with some provisions keeping the NSA at arms length to molify the public, but I lost interest exactly what it was because the article was pretty confusing.

    1. Re:TLDR by AHuxley · · Score: 1

      A digital Berlin wall to find whistleblowers on any network and a new generation of private company boondoggle funding.
      Contractors and mil systems that once faced the Soviet Union are now invited in for domestic use via new "portals".
      Some Freedom of Information Act provision might allow for talking about projects historically but less of the secure in papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches domestically.
      The collective agencies are free from antitrust scrutiny, liability and are free use the cyberthreat, cybercrime aspects as desired domestically.

      --
      Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
  2. Well I got one thing from this by Crashmarik · · Score: 2

    The word cyber has been abused to the point where it means little if anything.*

    *Of course to be fair nobody really understood what Norbert Weiner when he coined it to talk about self regulating control systems

  3. Either way by ITRambo · · Score: 3, Funny

    I hope that the elected officials in Congress, that promised to serve the public, actually read the bills before voting on them.

    1. Re:Either way by ATMAvatar · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Why bother? As long as they have the right letter (D or R) next to their name, the voting public couldn't care less what they do in office. The re-election rate of Congressmen has been over 90% for most election cycles in the last half century, and it never once dropped below 80% during that period.

      --
      "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."
    2. Re: Either way by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They didn't even write the bills before voting on them.

    3. Re:Either way by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Until you consider the number of people that run, and their qualifications, this percentage means nothing.

      In other words, unless you registered yourself as a candidate, what are you complaining about?

    4. Re:Either way by Chas · · Score: 1

      I hope that the elected officials in Congress, that promised to serve the public, actually read the bills before voting on them.

      AHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

      That's funny.

      Basically, officials care about three things:

      1) Did THEY get money out of it?
      2) Is one of their pork projects rider'ed in on the bill?
      3) Was primary authorship of said bill under the proper wing of the US Political Monoparty?

      --


      Chas - The one, the only.
      THANK GOD!!!
    5. Re:Either way by StikyPad · · Score: 1

      We have qualifications to run for Congress now?

      --
      https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
    6. Re:Either way by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      After my stint in DC, I believe there is one thing elected officials demonstrably care about more than all the others*

      Re-election.

      * Yes, there are other concerns, but they are all of lesser import.

  4. Summary of analysis of those bills by OTI by whh3 · · Score: 1

    Here is an outline of the response to this week's congressional activity from the Open Technology Institute at the New America Foundation:

    http://www.newamerica.org/oti/house-passes-second-flawed-cybersecurity-information-sharing-bill/

    To be completely transparent, I worked at OTI and think they are great.

    Will

    --
    remove nospam. to email!
  5. More security theater by ohmiccurmudgeon · · Score: 1

    Just great. We already share vulnerability reports through Mitre's CVE database. Mitre might as well be the DoD. The Pentagon already hosts several cyber warfare organizations. They seem to play well with NIST and its _National_ Vulnerabilities Database. We already have rules and regulations on submitting vulnerability data, and our customer will sue us if we reveal _any_ personal identifying information. We certainly aren't going to reveal any when publishing a vulnerability.

    So now Congress wants to transfer control over to the DHS, who have no previous experience in cyber security, and even worse, have demonstrated their competence and lack thereof with our airport security. Funny how my right to avoid search and seizure without due process goes out the window when I want to board an airplane -- and strangely, I don't feel any safer. I take solace in that the terrorists seem less competent than DHS.

    This going to turn out well. Not.