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-- potentially "cripple privacy and security in one fell swoop" through one provision (alone) empowering the Commerce Secretary to "have access to all relevant data concerning (critical infrastructure) networks without regard to any provision of law, regulation, rule, or policy restricting such access...."
In other words, the Commerce Department will be empowered to access "all relevant data" - without privacy safeguards or judicial review. As a result, constitutionally protected privacy protections will be lost - ones guaranteed under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the Privacy Protection Act, and financial privacy regulations.
Another provision mandates a feasibility study for an identity management and authentication program that would sidestep "appropriate civil liberties and privacy protections."
At issue is what role should the federal government play in cybersecurity? How much power should it have? Can it dismiss constitutional protections, and what, in fact, can enhance cybersecurity without endangering our freedoms?
S. 773 and 778, as now written, "make matters worse by weakening existing privacy safeguards (without) address(ing) the real problems of security."
Months later, S. 773 was secretly redrafted, but from what's known, leaves it mostly unchanged. Like the original version, it gives the president carte blanche power "to decide which networks and systems, private or public, count as 'critical infrastructure information systems or networks," according to the EFF's Richard Esguerra. It also lets him shut down the Internet in both versions of the bill.
The original one states:
"The President....may order the disconnection of any Federal Government or United States critical infrastructure information systems or network in the interest of national security."
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