Tell Senators to Protect Our Privacy

The Cybersecurity Act is set to go to the Senate Floor next week. Amendments have been introduced that provide key privacy protections for Internet users, including

• A narrowing of the private information companies can share with the government;
• A requirement that companies share cybersecurity information with civilian agencies and not with the NSA, a secretive military agency with little to no public accountability;
• And a substantial narrowing of the non-cybersecurity purposes for which the shared information can be used by the government.

These protections make the Cybersecurity Act, as it currently stands, far superior on privacy to CISPA and the McCain Bill, SECURE IT Act. And the changes would not have been possible if the public had not spoken out for privacy fixes.

However, amendments could be introduced on the Senate floor that could water down the privacy protections that we've won or attack privacy in new ways. Please contact your Senators and tell them to oppose any floor amendments that would water down our privacy protections. Also ask them to support an amendment to scrap the 'monitoring and countermeasures' provision, which would allow companies to monitor private traffic and block or modify traffic without necessary limitations.

Although CDT cannot support the Cybersecurity Act in its current form because the 'monitoring and countermeasures' provision remains in tact, we applaud the privacy protecting amendments, and we'll fight to see that our gains on privacy are not wiped out on the Senate floor.