CISA passes Senate committee, raises privacy concerns

The hotly debated Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) took a step forward Thursday, getting the nod from the Senate Intelligence Committee by a vote of 14 to one.

The legislation, often described by critics as the bill formerly known as CISPA, advocates information-sharing between private companies and government. 

The committee's sole holdout, Sen. Ron Wyden, said in statement that “if information-sharing legislation does not include adequate privacy protections then that's not a cybersecurity bill — it's a surveillance bill by another name.” The senator added that information sharing by private companies is desirable but “only acceptable if there are strong protections for the privacy rights of law-abiding American citizens.”

Because the dozen amendments added to the bill were done during a closed door session before the vote, it is not yet known how the legislation reads or what privacy protections it may include.