House to take up cybersecurity bill with revisions

The House of Representatives will take up a cybersecurity bill at the end of April that lets the government and corporations share information about hacking attacks on U.S. networks, with amendments intended to ease civil liberties concerns.

Reps Mike Rogers (R-MI) and C.A. "Dutch" Ruppersberger (D-MD), the top two lawmakers on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, are pushing legislation that would expand a Pentagon pilot program for sharing classified and sensitive threat information from just defense contractors and their Internet providers to a broader segment of the private sector. The bill, which has 105 co-sponsors, has come under attack from groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which said in a blog post last month that the bill failed to use narrow enough language to define a cyber threat.