CISPA cybersecurity bill, co-sponsored by MD congressman, passes U.S. House

The first legislative hurdle in the policy battle around America’s role in cyber warfare has been cleared by Congressmen Mike Rogers of Michigan and Dutch Ruppersberger of Maryland, sponsors of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act.

Better known as CISPA, the act passed in the U.S. House on Thursday by a vote of 288 to 127. It was passed by the House in April 2012, too, and the 2013 bill now heads to the U.S. Senate, which rejected a similar version of the bill last year. As it did in 2012, the White House suggested it would veto the effort anyway, but CISPA’s passing shows there is growing commitment to the conversation.

View the final vote tally here.

As Technically Baltimore has been reporting, the act would authorize information sharing between private companies and the federal government about cyber threat information in an effort to better protect U.S. companies and government agencies from cybersecurity breaches.

View the roundup of our five-part CISPA series here. 

But privacy groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation maintain that CISPA is an overreaching act that doesn’t protect people’s personally identifiable information online. Other prominent politicians agree, including Democratic Congresswoman Nancy Pelosi, minority leader of the U.S. House, who voted against the legislation.