Congress moving on long-sought legislation to thwart cyberattacks

In some respects, the House Intelligence Committee’s bill is preferable to the Senate’s, said Robyn Greene, policy counsel with the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute. But, she said, “it is still a surveillance bill.” She pointed to language that describes the permitted uses for the cyber threat data, including investigations of serious felonies such as murder, kidnapping and robbery. “Everyone wants law enforcement to investigate these crimes, but not at the expense of Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights,” Greene said. She said law enforcement should be required to obtain a warrant before looking at the data for those purposes.