I'd love to see the amendments or revisions that are purported to be doing this to the bill.
(I don't support CISA, but if you asked me which I'd rather get rid of, CISA or Techdirt, I'd have to think about it.)
update:
http://docs.house.gov/billsthisweek/20151214/CPRT-114-HPRT-R...
It's a whole bunch of bills crammed into one document. CISA starts around page 1730.
It sounds on the whole fairly reasonable. Here is my understanding...
Companies can monitor their own systems or the systems of clients for cyberthreats and share this information with the government and with each other. They must redact personal information of non-involved parties. The capabilities and scope of the monitoring system are to be disclosed publicly. All sounds fine. Where it appears to go a bit off the rails is page 1765-1766 (section A). Here the purpose seems to expand beyond "cybersecurity" and deviate into monitoring non-cyber criminal behavior. Preventing threat of death, terrorist attacks, harm to minors (yes.. think of the children), and... serious economic harm (what exactly is that and to who?). So... it is more than a cybersecurity bill but this little bit is buried in a small few lines 40 pages into the section after mentioning "cybersecurity" probably 70 times previously as the purpose of the bill. Seems a little bait and switch.
For the record I don't disagree (in total) with monitoring for these types of serious criminal activities.. I've always assumed it was done and assume it will continue to be done. Just don't call it "cybersecurity" when it is really flat out mass surveillance for non-cyber related threats.
Also, it seems that the bottom line is a committee to talk about a committee in some far off period of time. Typical.
But overall I agree... bureaucratic silliness. Bait and switch dishonesty. Think of the children nonsense. In short, typical Washington DC behavior. But not the end of the free internet.
Why? Techdirt often has great coverage of tech policy issues.
They're in business to generate rageviews, not to inform.
Techdirt is like the ZeroHedge of Internet policy news.