House Democrat to push for privacy change to cyber bill

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) will propose an amendment to a controversial cybersecurity bill that aims to address one of the top concerns privacy advocates have with the cyber threat-sharing measure.

Rep Schiff plans to offer the amendment during the House Intelligence Committee's closed-door markup of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA). If the amendment is adopted, companies would be required to "make reasonable efforts" to strip personally identifiable information from cyber threat data prior to sharing it with the government or other businesses. The bill's authors, Reps. Mike Rogers (R-MI) and Dutch Ruppersberger (D-MD), say CISPA is aimed at removing the legal hurdles that prevent companies and government from sharing information about malicious source code and other cyber threats with one another in real time, so cyberattacks can be thwarted more quickly. But the bill has sparked fierce pushback from privacy advocates that say the bill lacks sufficient protections for people's private information and would allow this information to flow directly to the National Security Agency.