U.S. House endangers digital freedom by passing CISPA for the second year in a row

Ignor­ing a veto threat from Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma, the U.S. House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives vot­ed today to pass Repub­li­can Con­gress­man Mike Rogers’ Cyber Intel­li­gence Shar­ing and Pro­tec­tion Act, bet­ter known as CISPA, for the sec­ond year in a row. The vote on final pas­sage, which hap­pened this morn­ing, was two hun­dred and eighty-eight to one hun­dred and twenty-eight.

Osten­si­bly, CISPA is intend­ed to help bol­ster Inter­net secu­ri­ty in the Unit­ed States and make it eas­i­er for the U.S. gov­ern­ment and major cor­po­ra­tions to share infor­ma­tion about cyber threats. In real­i­ty, CISPA is a threat to our dig­i­tal free­dom and civ­il lib­er­ties, and gives the gov­ern­ment more spy­ing powers.

CISPA did not make it out of the U.S. Sen­ate after pass­ing the House last year, which is why it was rein­tro­duced in the House this year. The 2013 incar­na­tion of the bill has fol­lowed a sim­i­lar tra­jec­to­ry to the 2012 incar­na­tion. It was shep­herd­ed through com­mit­tee by Mike Rogers, amend­ed slight­ly, and then approved on the House floor despite a veto threat from the White House.

The vote for and against the bill was bipar­ti­san, but most no votes came from Democ­rats and most yes votes came from Republicans.

The roll call for the Pacif­ic North­west was as follows:

Vot­ing Aye: Democ­rats Adam Smith, Rick Larsen, Derek Kilmer, Den­ny Heck (WA), Kurt Schrad­er (OR); Repub­li­cans Doc Hast­ings, Cathy McMor­ris-Rodgers, Dave Reichert (WA), Greg Walden (OR), Mike Simp­son (ID), Don Young (AK), Steve Daines (MT)

Vot­ing Nay: Democ­rats Suzan Del­Bene, Jim McDer­mott (WA), Suzanne Bonam­i­ci, Pete DeFazio, Earl Blu­me­nauer (OR); Repub­li­cans Jaime Her­rera-Beut­ler (WA) and Raúl Labrador (ID)

Two days ago, we asked our region’s U.S. Rep­re­sen­ta­tives to vote against this lat­est incar­na­tion of CISPA. Most did not, but we are very grate­ful to those who did, par­tic­u­lar­ly Suzan Del­Bene, who rep­re­sents NPI’s home district.

Del­Bene said in a state­ment sent to NPI short­ly after the vote that CISPA 2013 was sim­ply too flawed to earn her support.

“While I sup­port the goals of this leg­is­la­tion, the CISPA bill vot­ed on by the House today unfor­tu­nate­ly does not offer nec­es­sary pro­tec­tions to safe­guard Amer­i­cans’ pri­va­cy and con­sti­tu­tion­al rights,” she said.

“I com­mend the good faith, bipar­ti­san effort by my col­leagues to draft effec­tive leg­is­la­tion, but today’s bill still falls short. While the bill vot­ed on today is an improve­ment from last year’s ver­sion, it ulti­mate­ly fails to ade­quate­ly pro­tect civ­il lib­er­ties. It grants immu­ni­ty to cor­po­ra­tions that don’t pro­tect the per­son­al infor­ma­tion of cus­tomers that they freely share with the fed­er­al government.”

“This bill doesn’t do enough to pre­vent per­son­al­ly iden­ti­fi­able infor­ma­tion or the pri­vate com­mu­ni­ca­tions of indi­vid­u­als from being col­lect­ed by fed­er­al agen­cies. This is incon­sis­tent with our nation’s val­ues regard­ing indi­vid­ual privacy.”

We strong­ly con­cur and we thank Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Del­Bene as well as Rep­re­sen­ta­tive McDer­mott for cast­ing an informed and coura­geous vote. We also extend our thanks to Repub­li­cans Jaime Her­rera Beut­ler and Raúl Labrador for their no votes. They were the only Repub­li­cans from our region to vote no.

Three of Ore­gon’s four Democ­rats also vot­ed no.

We are very dis­ap­point­ed in our region’s oth­er Democ­rats for their aye votes. CISPA is fatal­ly flawed leg­is­la­tion that lacks robust pri­va­cy and civ­il lib­er­ties safe­guards. It is not well draft­ed. That is why we are strong­ly opposed to it and it is why Pres­i­dent Oba­ma has threat­ened a veto, both last year and this year.

Adam Smith, Rick Larsen, Den­ny Heck, and Derek Kilmer should have fol­lowed the lead of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Del­Bene and McDer­mott and vot­ed no on CISPA 2013.

We will be in con­tact with each of them to express our dis­ap­point­ment in their votes over the next few days. We now urge our region’s U.S. Sen­a­tors, espe­cial­ly Maria Cantwell, Pat­ty Mur­ray, Ron Wyden, and Jeff Merkley, to put a stop to CISPA in the U.S. Sen­ate so this poor­ly writ­ten leg­is­la­tion nev­er gets out of Congress.