Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. I thank the chairman for yielding.

First thing, to the Congresswoman from Arizona, I really appreciate all of your work on this bill. You came to Congress; you did your homework; you decided that it was important to protect our country; and you've done a lot of work. I just want to let you know that you've done a great job for your district and for America, generally, and I want to thank you for that.

Basically, this amendment really allows the Committee on Homeland Security and the Inspector General to oversee and to do reporting. It's important that we have oversight. I know the chairman and I have worked hard to make sure that we deal with all of the privacy issues, and this is just another example of how we're going to protect our privacy. You cannot have security if you don't have privacy.

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Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. Mr. Chair, while we never believe that any surveillance of Americans was permitted under our bill, we are taking any and all precautions to make it entirely clear that no element of the intelligence community--which, of course, includes the Department of Defense and the National Security Agency--is authorized to target any United States person for surveillance. The chairman's amendment solidifies the privacy and civil liberties protections that we always have intended to have as part of the bill. No American activities or communications will be targeted--period.

We cannot have security without privacy.

Therefore, I urge a ``yes'' vote on this amendment, and I reserve the balance of my time.

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Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. I thank Congressman Paulsen for his work on this bill. I support his amendment with the sense of Congress to encourage international cooperation with regard to cybersecurity whenever possible under this bill.

Given that cyber threats are global in nature, as are our networks and computer systems, international efforts must work together to protect against domestic and foreign actors who seek to destroy our industries, government, agencies, and utilities.

Therefore, I urge a ``yes'' vote on the amendment, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. First, I would like to thank Congressman Barton for his work on the bill.

You've made the bill stronger, and we want to make sure that there is no perception that people's privacies are being violated.

I support Congressman Barton's amendment, which ensures that nothing in our bill, CISPA, provides the authority for any entity to sell a consumer's personal information for marketing purposes.

I yield back the balance of my time.

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Mr. RUPPERSBERGER. First thing, I want to thank the ranking member, Mr. Thompson, and I want to thank Mr. McCaul and Mr. Rogers for coming together. That's what we're elected to do, to come together in a bipartisan way and to deal with difficult issues. And they were difficult issues. But we're here today to all support this amendment.

The White House and the privacy groups raised this as one of the main issues with the bill. These groups were concerned that there was an impression, wrongly, I believe, that the military would control the program. This was never the case, but we heard these concerns, and we are addressing them in this amendment.

It means that companies sharing information about cyber threats will go to the Department of Homeland Security, a civilian agency. If the information is related to cybersecurity crime, the companies will go to the Department of Justice, another civilian agency.

The amendment requires that the Department of Homeland Security share this information with other government agencies in real-time so they can use it to protect against future cyber threats and attacks.

This amendment ensures we protect the security of our Nation, but also protect the privacy and liberties of our country and our citizens. I strongly support this amendment and urge other Members to do the same.

I commend, again, Ranking Member Thompson, Chairman McCaul, Chairman Rogers for coming together at the last moment. I respectfully request a ``yes'' vote on the amendment.

You can't have security if you don't have privacy and liberty.

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