Controversial Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act Passes in Senate

The U.S. Senate today passed the controversial Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, also known as CISA, in a 74 to 21 vote. A similar bill has already passed in the House, and the two cybersecurity bills will likely be combined before heading to the White House for a final decision from President Obama. The vote comes a week after Apple spoke out against the bill.

CISA is designed to allow companies to share information on cybersecurity threats with one another and the government. However, as noted by Wired, privacy advocates have asked Congress to kill the bill, saying that it hides "new government surveillance mechanisms in the guise of security protections."

Apple spoke out against the bill last week after other technology companies, like Twitter, Yelp, Wikipedia, reddit also opposed the bill. The Computer and Communications Industry Association, which represents Google, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft had urged the Senate to make improvements to the bill, saying that they do not support the bill as it's currently written.

The Cupertino company once again reiterated its commitment to user privacy in its opposition to the legislation, saying that it doesn't support CISA and that the trust of its customers "means everything to us and we don't believe security should come at the expense of privacy." Apple has taken a strong privacy stance in recent years, continually noting that the government doesn't have access to its servers. In iOS 8, Apple ended its storage of encryption keys for iOS devices, making it impossible for the company to unlock iPads an iPhones under police request.

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