Senate delays, maybe kills, cybersecurity bill

IDG News Service - The U.S. Senate on Thursday failed to end debate on a comprehensive cybersecurity bill, pushing action on the bill into September and potentially killing it.

The Senate voted 52-46 to end debate and move toward a final vote on the revised Cybersecurity Act, but 60 votes were needed to move forward. This week, members of President Barack Obama's administration called passage of the bill critical for U.S. national security.

The Senate is expected to start its August recess on Friday, not returning until Sept. 7. It is typically difficult for controversial legislation to pass between September and the national election in November.

Opponents of the bill, including many Republicans, said it still has several problems that need to be worked out. Sponsors of the Cybersecurity Act introduced the revised version of the bill July 19, and many critics said there hasn't been enough time to fix the legislation.

Supporters of the bill shouldn't see the vote against cloture Thursday as an attempt to kill the bill but an attempt to amend it and improve it, said Senator John McCain, an Arizona Republican. The bill would give the U.S. government too much power to set and amend cybersecurity standards developed with the help of private companies, McCain has said.

Several senators have come to "some agreement that we think could move this legislation forward in a fashion that recognizes the importance of the issue and yet dramatically, in our view, improves the legislation," McCain said. "So I would hope that the Republican leader and the majority leader would not interpret this vote ... as an impediment to the process that I think was moving on a path where we could have reached some agreement and addressed this issue and this legislation conclusively."

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce raised similar concerns. "The bill would give the federal government too much control over what actions the business community could take to protect its computers and networks," Ann Beauchesne, the chamber's vice president of national security, said in an email. "Businesses need concrete certainty that they would have an equal voice over the direction of the program and that the program would be responsive and dynamic, just like the Internet itself."

The chamber also called for the Senate to strengthen lawsuit protections in the bill.

Republican senators were "running like scared cats" away from the bill because of the chamber's opposition, Senator Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat and Senate majority leader said Thursday. The chamber is a major backer of many Republican candidates.

Several other senators, led by Minnesota Democrat Al Franken, pushed for privacy protections in the bill. The legislation would allow Internet service providers and other Web businesses to spy on customers to share information with the government without the need for a warrant, he said. The bill would take away customer rights to sue those businesses, he added.