Government spies say the new internet security bill would let them spy too much

(Image credit: Sean Gallup/Getty Images)

published 4 August 2015

Minnesota Sen. Al Franken released a letter from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) on Monday which sees the surveillance agency objecting to the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA) on the grounds that it would give the government too much surveillance authority.

"The authorization to share cyber threat indicators and defensive measures with 'any other entity or the Federal Government,' 'notwithstanding any other provision of law,'" the DHS letter noted, "could sweep away important privacy protections." Some of the agency's other objections are more self-serving in nature, like its complaint that CISA would "increase the complexity and difficulty of a new information sharing program."

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.

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