White House threatens veto of Mike Rogers’ reincarnated CISPA in its current form

Leg­is­la­tion mak­ing its way through the U.S. House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives that could fur­ther erode our civ­il lib­er­ties would be vetoed by Pres­i­dent Oba­ma were it to reach his desk in its cur­rent form, the White House said today.

In a for­mal state­ment of admin­is­tra­tion pol­i­cy on H.R. 624, more com­mon­ly known as the Cyber Intel­li­gence Shar­ing and Pro­tec­tion Act, or CISPA, the Office of Man­age­ment and Bud­get out­lined what Pres­i­dent Oba­ma wants to see in a cyber­se­cu­ri­ty bill from Con­gress and char­ac­ter­ized the cur­rent ver­sion in the House — backed by Rep­re­sen­ta­tive Mike Rogers — as unacceptable.

The Admin­is­tra­tion rec­og­nizes and appre­ci­ates that the House Per­ma­nent Select Com­mit­tee on Intel­li­gence (HPSCI) adopt­ed sev­er­al amend­ments to H.R. 624 in an effort to incor­po­rate the Admin­is­tra­tion’s impor­tant sub­stan­tive con­cerns. How­ev­er, the Admin­is­tra­tion still seeks addi­tion­al improve­ments and if the bill, as cur­rent­ly craft­ed, were pre­sent­ed to the Pres­i­dent, his senior advi­sors would rec­om­mend that he veto the bill. The Admin­is­tra­tion seeks to build upon the con­tin­u­ing dia­logue with the HPSCI and stands ready to work with mem­bers of Con­gress to incor­po­rate our core pri­or­i­ties to pro­duce cyber­se­cu­ri­ty infor­ma­tion shar­ing leg­is­la­tion that address­es these crit­i­cal issues.

Empha­sis is theirs.

Pri­or to today’s veto threat, the House had been mov­ing towards a vote on this lat­est incar­na­tion of CISPA, so the state­ment sent out less than a cou­ple hours ago is very time­ly and wel­come. Our allies in the Inter­net Defense League have been work­ing hard to stop CISPA in its tracks; the ACLU even cre­at­ed a peti­tion ask­ing the White House to do just what it did today.

CISPA is fatal­ly flawed leg­is­la­tion. Democ­rats like Adam Schiff and Jan Schakowsky tried to fix some of the bil­l’s most trou­ble­some pro­vi­sions in com­mit­tee but their amend­ments were reject­ed. The amend­ments to the bill that were adopt­ed amount to lit­tle more than win­dow dress­ing. They don’t fix the bil­l’s problems.

If you haven’t heard of CISPA before (or have heard it men­tioned in the news but aren’t famil­iar with its dan­ger­ous pro­vi­sions), the Elec­tron­ic Fron­tier Foun­da­tion has a good run­down of it that you ought to read.

It was pro­posed in the last Con­gress and even passed the Repub­li­can-con­trolled House, but it did­n’t make it out of the Senate.

We urge all read­ers and sup­port­ers to join in the cam­paign to defeat CISPA, and we ask all of our rep­re­sen­ta­tives — Suzan Del­Bene, Rick Larsen, Jaime Her­rera-Beut­ler, Doc Hast­ings, Cathy McMor­ris Rodgers, Derek Kilmer, Jim McDer­mott, Dave Reichert, Adam Smith, Den­ny Heck, Suzanne Bonam­i­ci, Greg Walden, Earl Blu­me­nauer, Pete DeFazio, Kurt Schrad­er, Raúl Labrador and Mike Simp­son — to vote against CISPA if it comes up for a vote in the House.