Cybersecurity bill could ‘sweep away’ internet users’ privacy, agency warns
(Worthy News) – The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Monday said a controversial new surveillance bill could sweep away “important privacy protections”, a move that bodes ill for the measure’s return to the floor of the Senate this week, the UK Guardian reported.
The latest in a series of failed attempts to reform cybersecurity, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (Cisa) grants broad latitude to tech companies, data brokers and anyone with a web-based data collection to mine user information and then share it with “appropriate Federal entities”, which themselves then have permission to share it throughout the government.
Minnesota senator Al Franken queried the DHS in July; deputy secretary of the department Alejandro Mayorkas responded today that some provisions of the bill “could sweep away important privacy protections” and that the proposed legislation “raises privacy and civil liberties concerns”. [ Source ]
Dream of Free and Open Internet Dying, Lawyer says
The annual Black Hat computer security conference in Las Vegas kicked off Wednesday with a keynote address from Jennifer Granick, director of Civil Liberties at the Stanford Center for Internet and Society. Granick said that while the Internet needs to be reasonably safe in order to be functional, it’s no longer the revolutionary place it was 20 years ago.
No one is murdering the dream of an open Internet, she said, but it’s withering away because no one is prioritizing its protection. On top of that, new Internet users are coming from countries whose citizens aren’t protected by a Bill of Rights or a First Amendment. [ Source ]