Polis Statement on House Passage of Cybersecurity Bills

Press Release

Representative Jared Polis (D-CO) issued the following statement following today's House passage of H.R. 1731, the National Cybersecurity Protection Advancement Act, and yesterday's passage of H.R. 1560, Protecting Cyber Networks Act:

"As we have seen time and again, the federal government has an exceptionally poor track record of safeguarding Americans' personal information when it is entrusted with it. Sadly, this week the House chose to entrust the federal government with even broader access to our constituents' private lives.

"Our experience with the NSA has shown us that to protect Americans' civil liberties from an overzealous surveillance apparatus, the authorities to review and share Americans' personal information need to be constructed as narrowly and unambiguously as possible. They need to be limited to a specific set of circumstances in which sharing that information is necessary for mitigating a security threat.

"Both the Protecting Cyber Networks Act and the National Cybersecurity Protection Advancement Act fall well short of this standard -- and in the case of the Protecting Cyber Networks Act, woefully short.

"This legislation would enable federal agencies to store and share Americans' private information -- such as their Internet habits and even the content of their online communications -- based on a vague and broad standard that doing so is "not unrelated' to a cybersecurity threat. It would make it easier for government agencies to deliberately weaken software systems for the purposes of creating new surveillance back-doors. And it would leave the door wide open to more NSA surveillance by allowing the sharing of personal information for a raft of purposes unrelated to cybersecurity.

"These actions are completely in contrast to the very loud message that my constituents, and Americans everywhere, have sent to us following revelations of the NSA's shockingly broad data collection program. Americans want an end to unwarranted surveillance and they deserve better than these two deeply flawed bills."

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