CISA Surveillance Bill Hidden Inside Last Night's Budget Bill (engadget.com)

Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday December 16, 2015 @06:58AM from the one-more-thing dept.

An anonymous reader writes that the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) was inserted into the omnibus budget deal passed by the House of Representatives late last night. Engadget reports: "Last night's budget bill wasn't all about avoiding a government shutdown. Packed inside the 2,000-page bill announced by Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) is the full text of the controversial Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) of 2015. If you'll recall, the measure passed the Senate back in October, leaving it up to the House to approve the bill that encourages businesses to share details of security breaches and cyber attacks. Despite being labeled as cybersecurity legislation, critics of CISA argue that it's a surveillance bill that would allow companies to share user info with the US government and other businesses. As TechDirt points out, this version of the bill stripped important protections that would've prevented directly sharing details with the NSA and required any personally identifying details to be removed before being shared. It also removes restrictions on how the government can use the data."

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41 states have it. 43 line-item. Rs gave Clinton by raymorris · 2015-12-16 08:00 · Score: 5, Informative

41 states have that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
43 states allow their governors to veto specific items in bills.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
In 1996 the Republicans gave Clinton line-item veto. The Supreme Court ruled it was unconstitutional, because Article I, Section 7 of the Constitution says the president either signs or vetoes the bill, not -part- of the bill. It needs to be done as a constitutional amendment.
Re:And since our Legilators Rarely Read the Bills. by breech1 · 2015-12-16 08:50 · Score: 5, Informative

In this case he really should use the one power left to a lame duck President and use the line item veto. He could strike out the CISA stuff and leave the rest of the funding intact. The question would be if he would actually do it, but we all know the answer to that is most likely no.
Presidents do not have a line-item veto power. Presidents can only veto the entire bill, which is why Congress habitually tries to add contentious items to "must-pass" bills.