[Libs-Or] 'Cybersecurity' bill vote soon

[Roberta Richards]

Legislative update:


CISA (S. 754) The Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015
<https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/senate-bill/754> is due for a
vote in the Senate *within a few days*.  The American Library Association
has joined civil libertarians and tech companies in opposition to this
legislation.


>From an ALA press release on Oct. 14th:


 “When librarians oppose a bill with ‘information sharing’ in its name you
can be sure that the bill is decidedly more than advertised. In fact, as
Sens. Wyden, Paul and Sanders have courageously pointed out in opposition
to it, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act would dramatically
over-share the personal information of tens of millions of Americans who
depend upon library computer networks, and could function, as a practical
matter, as a new warrantless surveillance tool. ALA calls on all Senators
to stand with Mr. Wyden, Mr. Paul and Mr. Sanders in keeping this
privacy-hostile bill from the Senate floor until it is critically reformed.”


ALA is concerned that not only will CISA not be effective in thwarting
cyberattacks, but it de facto grants broad new mass data collection powers
to many federal, as well as state and even local government agencies.
Leading security experts argue that CISA actually won’t do much, if
anything, to prevent future large-scale data breaches such as the federal
government has already suffered, but many worry it could make things worse,
by creating incentives for private companies and the government to widely
share huge amounts of Americans’ personally identifiable information that
will itself then be vulnerable to sophisticated hacking attacks.


Oregon Senator Ron Wyden is one of the primary opponents in Congress to
CISA:  “This bill won’t protect you from hackers...”
<https://medium.com/@RonWyden/this-bill-won-t-protect-you-from-hackers-6aff1d250f67#.toiq6bm5j>


<https://medium.com/@RonWyden/this-bill-won-t-protect-you-from-hackers-6aff1d250f67#.toiq6bm5j>

Tech companies have lined up in opposition to the bill, according to this
Washington Post article: “Apple and Dropbox say they don’t support a key
cybersecurity bill, days before a crucial vote.
<https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-switch/wp/2015/10/20/apple-says-its-against-a-key-cybersecurity-bill-days-before-a-crucial-vote/>
”


The Electronic Frontier Foundation is one of the privacy advocates helping
organize opposition to the bill:
https://act.eff.org/action/tell-the-senate-vote-no-on-the-cybersecurity-information-sharing-act


<https://act.eff.org/action/tell-the-senate-vote-no-on-the-cybersecurity-information-sharing-act>

The Intellectual Freedom Committee of the Oregon Library Association urges
the library community to engage in this critical debate.


-- 
Roberta Richards
Faculty Reference Librarian
971-722-4962
rrichard at pcc.edu
Southeast Library Research Desk: 971-722-6289
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