WASHINGTON -- Senators aren’t leaving for summer vacation yet. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) said Monday night he'll ask lawmakers to hammer out a major cybersecurity bill before they leave town for a four-week break.
McConnell had said previously he hoped to kick the cybersecurity bill through the upper chamber before lawmakers leave at the end of the this week. But doing so will require surmounting procedural hurdles -- and acquiescence of the bill’s chief critic, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).
McConnell's motion on Monday to consider the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act means the Senate can’t even take a procedural vote to start debate until Wednesday.
Wyden said it would be a “mistake” to bring the bill to the floor without allowing more time for a hearty debate. For privacy hawks like Wyden and Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.), a sticking point is that the bill encourages tech companies to voluntarily tell the government about viable cyber threats. That voluntary turn-over could compromise the privacy protections of customers, Wyden said.
Democrats are unlikely to block the bill’s advance, allowing it to get the 60 votes needed to bypass a filibuster and sail through final passage, according to a top Democratic aide. Ongoing negotiations will sweeten the deal, as the bill’s proponents, Sens. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), have made key concessions to garner more votes.
Burr and Feinstein circulated changes last week. Those changes have yet to be finalized, but documents summarizing the revisions say the government could only use information provided by tech companies to prosecute cyber-related crimes. Privacy advocates had been concerned the government could use the information to prosecute other offenses.
Another change would restrict information shared with the government to be related strictly to cybersecurity threat information. Another would prohibit the government from citing cybersecurity in response to Freedom of Information Act requests as a reason to keep information secret.
But the compromises are unlikely to placate all the bill’s critics.
“For example, the managers’ amendment does not fix the provision of this bill that will allow private companies to hand large volumes of their customers’ personal information over to the government with only a cursory review, even if that information is not necessary for cybersecurity,” Wyden said Monday.
The Senate Intelligence Committee passed the bill 14-1 in March; a House committee passed it in April.