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House intel committee working with White House to avoid another CISPA veto

The leaders of the House intelligence committee say they are working with the White House to ensure passage of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, which fell to a presidential veto threat last year but which Chairman Mike Rogers’ (R-Mich.) reintroduced yesterday. The bill would establish rapid information-sharing about cyber threats between private businesses ...

By John Reed

February 14, 2013, 11:15 PM

The leaders of the House intelligence committee say they are working with the White House to ensure passage of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, which fell to a presidential veto threat last year but which Chairman Mike Rogers' (R-Mich.) reintroduced yesterday.

The bill would establish rapid information-sharing about cyber threats between private businesses and the government. Last year, the White House threatened to veto it over concerns from privacy groups that the bill gave the government too much authority to view people’s online activities without a warrant.

"We were working with the White House for one year, and we thought everything was going to be fine," Dutch Ruppersburger, the committee’s ranking member, said yesterday in a joint appearance with Rogers. "Fifteen minutes before we went to the rules committee, we received a phone call that the president was going to veto our bill."

"We’ve resolved all that," he added. "We’re working with the White House as of today. Mike [Rogers] and I talked with the national security advisor [Tom] Donilon and the White House is now working with us to ensure that somehow, some way, we get a bill."

Rogers was a little more cautious, telling reporters yesterday that White House "does not endorse the bill" as it stands right now and that negotiations over its contents are ongoing. "They want to see changes in the bill, but that’s a long way from where we used to be," said Rogers. "We’re actually having a dialogue on how the bill moves through, I welcome that, that’s a good thing."

Ruppersburger and Rogers repeatedly emphasized during a Capitol Hill hearing today that the bill will not infringe on privacy, and that CISPA only authorizes the government and private companies to share digital threat signatures, "ones and zeros" that make up packets carrying malware.

It does not allow the government to not "monitor your computer, read your email, tweets or Facebook posts," Ruppersburger said yesterday.

The two lawmakers also said they are committed to working with privacy advocates on the bill.

John Reed is a national security reporter for Foreign Policy. He comes to FP after editing Military.com’s publication Defense Tech and working as the associate editor of DoDBuzz. Between 2007 and 2010, he covered major trends in military aviation and the defense industry around the world for Defense News and Inside the Air Force. Before moving to Washington in August 2007, Reed worked in corporate sales and business development for a Swedish IT firm, The Meltwater Group in Mountain View CA, and Philadelphia, PA. Prior to that, he worked as a reporter at the Tracy Press and the Scotts Valley Press-Banner newspapers in California. His first story as a professional reporter involved chasing escaped emus around California’s central valley with Mexican cowboys armed with lassos and local police armed with shotguns. Luckily for the giant birds, the cowboys caught them first and the emus were ok. A New England native, Reed graduated from the University of New Hampshire with a dual degree in international affairs and history.