When Republicans successfully blocked the cybersecurity legislation in the Senate earlier this month, I wondered for a moment whether I had stumbled through the Twilight Zone and emerged in Bizarro World. All of a sudden, I found myself in wholehearted agreement with almost every Senate Republican over their opposition to the bill, albeit for different reasons. The legislation, dubbed the Cybersecurity Act of 2012, was designed to better protect our nation’s infrastructure from a cyber attack. Although the bill failed, its proponents have not given up on their plans yet. Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., and the bill’s co-sponsor Sen. Joseph Lieberman, I-Conn., have both called for President Barack Obama to push through the legislation’s provisions with an executive order, and the administration has been reported to be considering it. The act compelled private industry to meet minimum standards to protect their computer networks and would have created more protections for critical facilities like the power grid. However, within the bill’s contents are provisions that caused an outcry from privacy advocates and their supportive organizations, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). These provisions, found in Section 701 of the bill, would have allowed companies to monitor their users’ communications without being bound by previously imposed legal limits, such as the Wiretap Act. They also permitted these companies to engage in “countermeasures,” an overly broad term that has the potential to lead to abuse. Despite these concerns, many Democrats and their supporters have spun the bill’s defeat as yet another organized effort by Republicans to block the Obama administration from passing successful legislation. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and White House Press Secretary Jay Carney both expressed the Cybersecurity Act’s defeat as an instance of Republican “obstructionism,” citing the bill’s bipartisan approval among national security and intelligence officials. Such hollow criticism fails to address the legitimate concerns of privacy advocates and downplays the last decade of evidence demonstrating a definite interest in the surveillance of American citizens by our intelligence community. It’s as if the Democrats tried serving us a dish but wanted us to ignore the bug on the plate. And now that it’s been rejected, they’re trying to shove it down our throats. Obama has not been shy about using executive orders when he felt he had to, but an executive order on cybersecurity could undermine the gains made by those advocating stricter privacy protections. When the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 was first introduced, it had even more privacy rights problems than it did when it was finally defeated. Then, it allowed private companies to share their users’ information with government agencies and allowed the government the freedom to use that information for more than just cybersecurity purposes, all while granting those companies legal immunity. Thanks to pressure from privacy groups, the bill was modified to mandate that information could only be shared with civilian agencies, and that such information could only be used for purposes related to cybersecurity. This was enough to get the American Civil Liberties Union to back off, although the EFF and other organizations such as Fight for the Future continued to oppose the bill for not going far enough. Now, it’s not certain that Obama will push the cybersecurity provisions through with an executive order, but I do know that such action would tell privacy advocates their aims do not matter. And no matter how much they achieve, their fears can still be confirmed by the simple signing of an order. I, for one, am tired of my rights being stripped in the name of security.
David Scheuermann is a 20-year-old mass communication and computer science junior from Kenner. ____ Contact David Scheuermann at [email protected]; Twitter: @TDR_dscheu