Worst Anti-Privacy Bill Since the PATRIOT Act, Passes Hidden in a Budget Bill and Media is SILENT (CISA - legislation essentially gives corporations legal immunity when sharing consumers’ private data about hacks and digital breaches with the Department of Homeland Security)

NSA-Ops-Center

By Jay Syrmopoulos

On Friday, Congress passed a $1.15 trillion omnibus spending package to continue funding the federal government, which included an already defeated, and extremely controversial cyber security bill, that was inserted into the spending package as a means of assuring its passage.
In spite of this massive revelation and horrific blow to privacy, the mainstream media remains mum. While many outlets are covering the passage of the spending bill, they are completely omitting anything about CISA.

The New York Times, for example, broke the story Friday morning about Congress passing the omnibus measure. However, they conveniently left out any mention of CISA.
Aside from the tech sites who know about the dangers of this measure, the entire realm of mainstream media is choosing to remain silent.

The Cyber Information Sharing Act (CISA), quietly pushed back in 2014 before being shut down by civil rights and privacy advocates, was added into the Omnibus Appropriations Bill by House Speaker Paul Ryan as a means circumventing rampant opposition to the anti-privacy legislation.
The CISA legislation, which Rep. Justin Amash called “the worst anti-privacy legislation since the USA PATRIOT Act,” has now been passed by Congress and will be signed into law by President Obama as part of the government spending package.

Advocates of the CISA provisions say their aim is to help prevent cyber threats, but critics say that the legislation essentially gives corporations legal immunity when sharing consumers’ private data about hacks and digital breaches with the Department of Homeland Security.

According to a report by Wired:

It creates the ability for the president to set up “portals” for agencies like the FBI and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, so that companies hand information directly to law enforcement and intelligence agencies instead of to the Department of Homeland Security. And it also changes when information shared for cybersecurity reasons can be used for law enforcement investigations. The earlier bill had only allowed that backchannel use of the data for law enforcement in cases of “imminent threats,” while the new bill requires just a “specific threat,” potentially allowing the search of the data for any specific terms regardless of timeliness.

Continue reading: http://www.activistpost.com/2015/12/worst-anti-privacy-bill-since-the-patriot-act-passes-hidden-in-a-budget-bill-and-media-is-silent.html