Senate Revokes Cloture on Cyber-Surveillance Bill CISA

Washington, DC – Today, Senator McConnell revoked his motion for cloture on the cyber-surveillance bill, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (S. 754). This revocation came after several weeks of negotiation failed to produce an agreement that would allow CISA to be sufficiently debated and amended to address its many outstanding operational and privacy concerns before August recess. The basis of an agreement has been reached which allows for 21 specified amendments to be debated, but no agreement has been reached as to the amount of time each amendment will be debated, and no date has been set for consideration of CISA to be taken up for the third time this Congress.

New America’s Open Technology Institute strongly opposes CISA as a threat to privacy and civil liberties; a threat to cybersecurity; and possibly even a threat to national security. In addition to significant grassroots opposition to CISA, over 70 civil society groups, companies, and leading security experts also wrote to the President urging that he threaten to veto CISA because of many of these shared concerns. Just this week, a letter from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) was released outlining that agency’s serious concerns about the operational and privacy problems that CISA would raise, even cautioning that as currently drafted, CISA would reduce rather than enhance situational awareness – the opposite of its purpose.

A brief analysis of the DHS letter is available here.

The following statement can be attributed to Robyn Greene, Policy Counsel at New America’s Open Technology Institute:

“The Senate was right to put consideration of CISA on hold. CISA is not ready for primetime, as the DHS letter warning that it could actually undermine cybersecurity makes clear. It would have been legislative malpractice to push forward on CISA with so many outstanding problems. In August, the Senate should go back to the drawing board, and draft legislation that will address 90% of all cyber threats by enhancing digital hygiene. Congress needs to stop focusing on information sharing legislation, which is at best, a 10% solution.”