The highest ranking Democratic lawmaker on judicial issues said Monday that the Cyber Information Sharing Act (CISA) would improperly undermine the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
Senate Judiciary Committee ranking member Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) said CISA would create unnecessary legal exemptions to FOIA and that the Senate is being asked to vote on them without first conducting proper oversight.
“Any amendments to this law should be considered by the Senate Judiciary Committee, which has exclusive jurisdiction–not in closed session by the Senate Intelligence Committee,” his office said in a press release sent Monday.
A floor vote on CISA is expected Tuesday afternoon.
An amendment sponsored by Leahy striking new FOIA exemptions created by CISA was included in the package of proposals that the Senate advanced last week.
As currently drafted, CISA would consider “cyber threat indicators and defensive measures” given to the US government as “voluntarily shared information and exempt from disclosure.”
The bill would also exempt from disclosure information shared with city and state police departments–a move that would complicate transparency regimes on the local and state levels throughout the country.
Leahy said that information shared under CISA would already be exempt from public disclosure due to FOIA provisions that protect “commercial, financial and proprietary” matters from public disclosure.
His office noted that he “successfully led a similar effort earlier this year” to stop the creation of FOIA loopholes “during Senate consideration of the surface transportation bill.”
Despite the inclusion of his FOIA language repeal amendment in the so-called “manager’s package,” Leahy voted against the CISA cloture motion that passed the Senate last week.
Thirteen other senators joined Leahy—eleven largely-progressive Democrats, including Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), and Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).
Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.)–the stalwart privacy advocate and another “nay” on last week’s motion to proceed—has described CISA as a “surveillance bill.”
In June, Leahy denounced a failed move by CISA co-sponsor and Senate Intelligence Committtee chair Richard Burr (R-N.C.) to attach the cybersecurity legislation to the annual defense policy bill.
