Rules panel blocks privacy amendments to CISPA

The House will begin consideration of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) on April 17. The House Rules Committee approved a dozen proposed amendments to the bill that will go to a vote on the House floor. Privacy-focused amendments offered by Reps. Adam Schiff (D-CA) and Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) were not adopted into the final rule.

The Democratic members' amendments would have required companies to take "reasonable steps" to strip personal information from cyber threat data before sharing it with the government, and ensured that military agencies would not be able to receive this data directly from companies. House Rules Committee Chairman Pete Sessions (R-TX) said he had talked with the bill's sponsors, Reps. Mike Rogers (R-MI) and Dutch Ruppersberger (D-MD), and that they "did not believe that this was in the spirit of what would best support protecting this country nor the sharing of information between agencies."