By striking down those amendments, "the House leadership has squandered an opportunity to achieve balanced cybersecurity legislation," CDT said in a statement. "We worked very hard to improve this bill. Now that the House leadership has decided to block amendments addressing two of our core issues, CDT cannot stand silent. We must oppose CISPA."
OMB on Wednesday said it opposes CISPA because the bill would fail to protect U.S. critical infrastructure "while repealing important provisions of electronic surveillance law without instituting corresponding privacy, confidentiality, and civil liberties safeguards."
The bill would allow broad sharing of cyberthreat information between private companies and government agencies "without establishing requirements for both industry and the Government to minimize and protect personally identifiable information," OMB said in a statement.
CISPA would also "inappropriately shield" companies that share information from customer lawsuits, even if the companies shared information in violation of U.S. law or the sharing cased damage or loss of life, OMB said. OMB urged Congress to consider more comprehensive cybersecurity legislation.
CISPA would allow private companies to share customer communications related to cyberthreats with a wide range of government agencies. The bill exempts private companies that share cyberthreat information in "good faith" customer lawsuits.