Controversial Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act Passes in Senate

Apple LogoThe U.S. Senate today passed the controversial Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, also known as CISA, in a 74 to 21 vote. A similar bill has already passed in the House, and the two cybersecurity bills will likely be combined before heading to the White House for a final decision from President Obama. The vote comes a week after Apple spoke out against the bill.

CISA is designed to allow companies to share information on cybersecurity threats with one another and the government. However, as noted by Wired, privacy advocates have asked Congress to kill the bill, saying that it hides "new government surveillance mechanisms in the guise of security protections."

Apple spoke out against the bill last week after other technology companies, like Twitter, Yelp, Wikipedia, reddit also opposed the bill. The Computer and Communications Industry Association, which represents Google, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft had urged the Senate to make improvements to the bill, saying that they do not support the bill as it's currently written.

The Cupertino company once again reiterated its commitment to user privacy in its opposition to the legislation, saying that it doesn't support CISA and that the trust of its customers "means everything to us and we don't believe security should come at the expense of privacy." Apple has taken a strong privacy stance in recent years, continually noting that the government doesn't have access to its servers. In iOS 8, Apple ended its storage of encryption keys for iOS devices, making it impossible for the company to unlock iPads an iPhones under police request.

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

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Top Rated Comments

Jess13 Avatar
121 months ago
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/17/edward-snowden-letter-brazilian-people



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Score: 28 Votes (Like | Disagree)
pika2000 Avatar
121 months ago
What do people expect?
People voted for the politicians that came up and approved this.
And people are now complaining?
And yet people keep voting and supporting the SAME politicians?

Hello? Am I missing something?
This bill is passed because the people want it. If you actually didn't want it, then maybe, just maybe, vote for somebody else to represent you. Just saying. If you keep voting and supporting the same politicians that you were complaining about, well, you got what you wished for.
Score: 24 Votes (Like | Disagree)
sputnikv Avatar
121 months ago
It's infuriating that politicians continue to go against the wishes of the people they're supposed to represent. How many times did they try to pass this through before?
Score: 24 Votes (Like | Disagree)
iphonedude2008 Avatar
121 months ago
If the government would stop focusing so much effort on mining our data and actually do something useful on the budget, everyone would be happier.
Score: 24 Votes (Like | Disagree)
jkcerda Avatar
121 months ago
One thing that both democrats and republicans agree with is craping on the constitution
Score: 17 Votes (Like | Disagree)
Watabou Avatar
121 months ago
For ****'s sake.

It's like emailing or letting representatives and senators know how we feel about this bill has absolutely no effect.
Score: 16 Votes (Like | Disagree)