Key Vote YES on the Wyden Amendment to Strengthen Privacy Protections in CISA

As one of our over 6.9 million FreedomWorks activists nationwide, I urge you to contact your senators and ask them to vote YES on the Wyden amendment to add crucial privacy protections to the Cyber Information Sharing Act (CISA), S. 754.

CISA purports to facilitate stronger network security across the nation by facilitating the interchange of information on cyber threats between private companies and government agencies. But one of CISA’s several gaping flaws is the incentive it creates for some companies to share this data recklessly.

The personally identifiable information (PII) of a company’s users can be attached to cyber threat indicators after a hack – potentially sensitive information that is generally unnecessary to diagnose the threat. But since companies which share cyber threat data are completely immune to consequence if that shared data should be misused, their incentive is to share the data as quickly as possible – even if that means some would be sharing PII.

And if that personal data is irresponsibly shared with the government, it gets spread far and wide between government agencies (including the NSA) in real time, thanks to CISA’s mandatory interagency sharing provision.

The Wyden amendment goes a long way toward addressing the potential misuse of this personal information by requiring companies which share cyber threat data to review said data to ensure that all PII that is not directly necessary to counter the cyber threat is deleted before it is shared.

Passing the Wyden amendment wouldn’t fully fix the problems with CISA, but it is an important protection against potential distribution and misuse of innocent consumers’ private information.

Please contact your senators and ask that they vote YES on the Wyden amendment to CISA. FreedomWorks will count the vote on this amendment as a Key Vote when calculating our Congressional Scorecard for 2015. The scorecard is used to determine eligibility for the FreedomFighter Award, which recognizes Members of Congress who consistently vote to support economic freedom and individual liberty.

Sincerely,

Adam Brandon
CEO, FreedomWorks