As a strong supporter of your individual privacy rights guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, I wanted to take a moment to explain my vote recently in favor of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, also known as CISPA, which would strengthen our cybersecurity defenses in the financial and military sectors while providing strong protections for your privacy and civil liberties under the Fourth Amendment.

The legislation amends the National Security Act of 1947 to enable the sharing of cyber threat information and codes to better equip the private sector to defend its own networks. The legislation does not allow the government to monitor private networks; limits the federal government’s use of the information voluntarily provided; restricts the government’s ability to search the data for anything unrelated to cybersecurity; exempts the information from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act; treats the information as proprietary and prohibits the data’s use in regulatory proceedings.  Additionally, the bill encourages the private sector to anonymize or minimize the information it shares with others, especially removing any personally identifiable information.

The CISPA bill also differs drastically from H.R.3261, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which is concerned with intellectual property rights and copyright infringement that many of you have previously raised concerns about. While SOPA would require U.S.-based domain servers, Internet advertisers, search engines and financial transaction providers to limit rogue Web sites access to users and advertisers, CISPA draws on a system of voluntary information sharing where the data obtained can only be used for security purposes and never to give another entity an unfair advantage. 

Cybersecurity is an issue for all of us. For example, if you have a credit or debit card, you may have been a victim of a cybersecurity breach.  Early this year, Global Payments Inc., which handles the processing of credit, debit and gift cards, was hit by hackers who may have stolen hundreds of thousands of account holders information, leaving these holders exposed to fraud and identity theft.  You may also remember in April 2011 when Sony experienced one of the largest online data breaches, compromising more than 100 million customers.  If you have luckily avoided one of the thousands of cybersecurity breaches that have put you directly at risk of stolen personal information, it is likely you have been indirectly impacted by companies’ slightly increasing their prices and fees in order to hire more personnel or purchase additional software to better protect their clients’ information.

In addition to money-driven hackers, there are terrorists and foreign nations interested in accessing the U.S. government’s and American businesses’ information on strategic military plans,  results from years of expensive research, data on mergers and acquisitions and information on our critical infrastructure, including our roads, nuclear facilities, energy reserves, utilities, financial networks, hospitals, military bases, among other entities.  This rampant industrial espionage is very real and costs American jobs.  Each day, U.S. companies report an onslaught of advanced cyber hackers, from countries like China, who are stealing information to gain an unfair competitive advantage, deleting crucial data.

As one of the most conservative members in Congress, I have consistently fought on your behalf to protect our constitutional freedoms against both government intrusion and foreign threat. I will continue to do so and firmly believe that the CISPA legislation helps accomplish those goals.