Senate Rejects All CISA Amendments Designed To Protect Privacy, Reiterating That It's A Surveillance Bill

In case you weren't already convinced that CISA is a surveillance bill masquerading as a cybersecurity bill, today, the Senate rejected four separate amendments to the bill that attempted to protect Americans' privacy better. Senator Wyden had an amendment to require the removal of personal information before information could be shared, which was voted down 55 to 41. Senator Heller had an amendment that was a backstop against the Wyden amendment, saying that if the Wyden amendment didn't pass, Homeland Security would be responsible for removing such personal information. That amendment also failed with 49 to 47 votes. Senator Leahy had an amendment that would have removed FOIA exemptions in the bill (making it much less transparent how CISA was used). That amendment was voted down 59 to 37. Senator Franken then had an amendment that would have "tightened" the definition of cybersecurity threats so that the shared information needed to be "reasonably likely" to cause damage, as opposed to the current "may" cause damage. And (you guessed it because you're good at this), it was also voted down by a 60 to 35 vote.

Meanwhile, Marcy Wheeler notes that the revised version of the bill by Senators Burr and Feinstein, which claimed to incorporate greater transparency requirements proposed by Senator Tester, actually takes away a lot of transparency and actually makes it more difficult for Congress to learn whether or not CISA is being used for domestic surveillance:

That Burr and DiFi watered down Tester's measures so much makes two things clear. First, they don't want to count some of the things that will be most important to count to see whether corporations and agencies are abusing this bill. They don't want to count measures that will reveal if this bill does harm.

Most importantly, though, they want to keep this information from Congress. This information would almost certainly not show up to us in unclassified form, it would just be shared with some members of Congress (and on the House side, just be shared with the Intelligence Committee unless someone asks nicely for it).

But Richard Burr and Dianne Feinstein want to ensure that Congress doesn't get that information. Which would suggest they know the information would reveal things Congress might not approve of.

Once again, these actions only make sense if CISA is being used to justify warrantless domestic surveillance. This raises the question of why Congress is willing to proceed with such a surveillance bill. We just went through a process showing that the public is uncomfortable with secret laws and interpretations that lead to surveillance. Why would they immediately push for a new secret law that expands surveillance and rejects any attempts to protect the privacy of the American public or any sort of transparency and accountability in how the bill is used?

The bill is positioned as a cybersecurity bill, but you'd be hard-pressed to find a single computer security expert who thinks it is useful or necessary. I've been trying, and so far, I can't find any.