Cyber Bill Boosts DHS Cyberthreat Sharing But Critics Fear Backdoor to NSA Surveillance

A funding deal approved by the House and set to clear Congress within days positions the Department of Homeland Security as the front door for hack surveillance intelligence arriving from private industry. The back door, to the chagrin of some privacy activists, is the intelligence community. The 2,000-page $1.1 trillion spending bill rife with unconnected policy measures creates an instant information-sharing regime housed at DHS. One of the provisions aligns very closely with a controversial, years-in-the-making bill called the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, or CISA.

A separate, related measure empowers Homeland Security to scan data from any agency for telltale signs of hacker operations. Companies within six months will receive procedures for voluntarily sharing with DHS details about malicious network activities, including email data that sometimes could contain personal information. Civil liberties activists say the risk of compromising privacy is greater than the chances of stopping a data breach under the legislation. Sen Ron Wyden (D-OR), an outspoken critic of US surveillance programs, tweeted after the deal was revealed late the day before: "Latest, worse version of CISA has no real privacy protections & would do little or nothing to prevent major hacks."