International Cyber Terrorism

and spyware bill and was passed on May 23, 2005 in the US House of
Representatives but died in the US Senate. The bill "makes unlawful the unauthorized
usage of a computer to take control of it, modify its setting, collect or induce the owner
to disclose personally identifiable information, install unsolicited software, and tamper
with security, anti-spyware, or anti-virus software."
On May 12, 2011, US Barack Obama proposed a package of cybersecurity legislative
reforms to improve the security of US persons, the federal government, and critical
infrastructure. A year of public debate and Congress hearings followed, resulting in the
House of Representative passing an information sharing bill and the Senate developing
a compromise bill seeking to balance national security, privacy, and business interests.
In July 2012, the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 was proposed by Senators Joseph
Lieberman and Susan Collins. The bill would have required creating voluntary "best
practice standards" for protection of key infrastructure from cyber attacks, which
businesses would be encouraged to adopt through incentives such as liability
protection. The bill was put to a vote in the Senate but failed to pass. Obama had voiced
his support for the Act in a Wall Street Journal op-ed, and it also received support from
officials in the military and national security including John O. Brennan, the chief
counterterrorism adviser to the White House. According to The Washington Post,
experts said that the failure to pass the act may leave the United States "vulnerable to
widespread hacking or a serious cyberattack." The act was opposed by Republican
senators like John McCain who was concerned that the act would introduce regulations
that would not be effective and could be a "burden" for businesses. After the Senate
vote, Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison stated that the opposition to the bill was
not a partisan issue but it not take the right approach to cybersecurity. The senate vote
was not strictly along partisan lines, as six Democrats voted against it, and five
Republicans voted for it. Critics of the bill included the US Chamber of
Commerce, advocacy groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and the Electronic
Frontier Foundation, cybersecurity expert Jody Westby, and The Heritage Foundation,
both of whom argued that although the government must act on cybersecurity, the bill
was flawed in its approach and represented "too intrusive a federal role."
In February 2013, Obama proposed the Executive Order Improving Critical
Infrastructure Cybersecurity. It represents the latest iteration of policy but is not
considered to be law as it has not been addressed by Congress yet. It seeks to improve
existing public-private partnerships by enhancing timeliness of information flow between
DHS and critical infrastructure companies. It directs federal agencies to share cyber
threat intelligence warnings to any private sector entity identified as a target. It also
tasks DHS with improving the process to expedite security clearance processes for
applicable public and private sector entities to enable the federal government to share
this information at the appropriate sensitive and classified levels. It directs the
development of a framework to reduce cyber risks, incorporating current industry best
practices and voluntary standards. Lastly, it tasks the federal agencies involved with
incorporating privacy and civil liberties protections in line with Fair Information Practice
Principles.
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