A bill currently being considered by the House Select Committee on Intelligence would intertwine the National Security Agency (NSA) with corporate America, exposing vast amounts of private civilian data to unprecedented levels of monitoring, all in the name of “cybersecurity.”
H.R. 3523, introduced last year by Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), purports to help safeguard American corporations from espionage and cyber crime by allowing the NSA and other federal spy agencies to work directly with large corporate players, funneling them classified information on threat assessments to enable companies to defend themselves.
The bill is openly supported by companies like AT&T, Lockheed Martin, Microsoft, Facebook, Boeing and Intel.
ACLU legislative counsel Michelle Richardson cautioned Wednesday that it is not something to be taken up lightly.
“[The Rogers bill] will encourage companies to share personal and private data with the government,” she said. “And then with very little oversight, allow the information to be used in a number of different ways.”
“If you put the government int he middle of an information sharing scheme, it is absolutely critical that you clarify that it must be run by a civilian agency,” Richardson added. “One of our biggest criticisms of the Rogers bill is that they either explicitly say information should go to the National Security Agency and Cyber Command, or they’re otherwise silent and allow companies to choose where they want to send information, including to these different military facilities.”
Rogers contended that the NSA is full of “brilliant” people who “spend their day trying to figure out what the bad guys are doing to people, and what potential bad things are out there that we ought to be looking for.”
From RawStory.com at: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/03/07/bill-would-create-partnership-between-nsa-and-u-s-corporations/