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US Budget Bill Passes With CISA Surveillance Intact (npr.org)
An anonymous reader writes: Early on Friday, the U.S. Senate approved the 2,000 page 'omnibus' budget bill that allocated $1.15 trillion in government funding. Later in the day, President Obama signed it into law. Because the budget bill was so important, many other pieces of unrelated legislation were tacked onto it, including the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, a bill notable for giving the government increased internet surveillance powers. Civil rights activists and tech experts largely consider it a "privacy disaster," and several lawmakers voted against the budget bill solely for CISA's inclusion. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) said, "Unfortunately, this misguided cyber legislation does little to protect Americans' security, and a great deal more to threaten our privacy than the flawed Senate version. Americans demand real solutions that will protect them from foreign hackers, not knee-jerk responses that allow companies to fork over huge amounts of their customers' private data with only cursory review." Corporations in the U.S. will now have "legal immunity when sharing consumers' private data about hacks and digital breaches."
The full omnibus is available online (PDF). The CISA provisions start on page 1,728.
I contacted them in the past. They log.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
The bill offers immunity to PRISM partners and telcos/ISPs who collaborate with the government to spy on US citizens. Snowden's leaks raised the possibility that citizens would sue the private collaborators for betraying private data to the government without judicial oversight. Now, that can't happen, because in the middle of a 2,000 page amendment to a budget bill the government has promised immunity to those who help the government spy on its citizens without a warrant.
Who (from which party) inserted CISA into the budget bill?
Apparently, it was House speaker Paul Ryan (R).
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.