Congress adds contested cybersecurity measures to 'must-pass' spending bill

Sam Thielman in New York
Wednesday 16 December 2015 15.41 GMT

Congress added some of the most controversial parts of the latest cybersecurity bill to its gigantic end-of-year “must-pass” omnibus spending package, including mandatory sharing of any consumer data it collects with the Internal Revenue Service, FBI and the National Security Agency.

Civil liberties experts said they were dismayed that Congress had used the late-night bill to pass some of the most invasive parts of the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (Cisa).

“Once again, members of Congress are using the government funding bill to pursue their extremist agendas,” said Anthony Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. “Sneaking damaging and discriminatory riders into a must-pass bill usurps the democratic process and is irresponsible.”

The House intelligence committee reportedly dominated discussion of the bill in conference and stripped it of what opponents, including Oregon senator Ron Wyden, described as already too-meager privacy protections. Language that would have prevented consumer financial data from being shared directly with the NSA, for example, is not in the final version of the bill.

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