The Hill is reporting that, despite the setbacks with cybersecurity legislation in the Senate last month, the White House is continuing to push forward on a "go-it-alone" path to enact some sort of measures that they feel are an imperative to protect critical infrastructure from hackers and other nefarious individuals.

Internet advocacy group Demand Progress launched a campaign this week to urge Democrats and Republican lawmakers to make a commitment - in writing - that they will protect internet freedom when creating new legislation and to make the issue part of their respective platforms.

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. That seems to be the mantra coming out of the White House this week following Friday's defeat of the Cybersecurity Act of 2012. According to The Hill, President Obama is weighing the possibility of issuing an executive order to deal with cyber threats to computer systems that control "critical infrastructure."

A letter from various advocacy groups sent to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) urge the leaders of the Senate to add the amendment offered by Al Franken (D-Minnesota) and Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) to the Cybersecurity Act of 2012. The Franken-Paul amendment would remove Section 701 from the bill. Section 701 gives corporations the authority to monitor the activity of internet users and use counter-measures against traffic they decide is engaged in "cyber threat" activity.

In a conference call for reporters on August 1 put together by the White House, some heavy hitters in the administration urged passage of the Senate bill, the Cybersecurity Act of 2012. Four top U.S. officials took part in the call: John Brennan, assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism; Gen. Keith Alexander, commander, U.S. Cyber Command, and director, National Security Agency; Jane Holl Lute, deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security; and Eric Rosenbach, deputy assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy.

SCARY! That's how Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nevada) describes the lack of progress on the Cybersecurity Act of 2012. While senators offer amendments on everything from gun control to abortion bans and Obamacare to the bill, progress on the bill has come to a screeching halt.

"It’s scary that we’re not doing something on this bill,” Reid said on the floor Wednesday morning. "The nation’s top security experts have said a cyber 9/11 is imminent."

Open Congress offers some biting commentary on why - even after a myriad of amendments have been offered to make it more palatable to those worried about privacy - the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 is bad news. The non-profit, non-partisan public resource that tracks how political influence is bought with campaign funds says that it cannot support the bill unless one important amendment is made.

As debate begins and amendments are offered on the Cybersecurity Act Of 2012, the bill may end up going through some fundamental changes that will make it more palatable for those who oppose many of its murkier provisions. So far over 70 amendments have been offered to the bill that aims to protect critical infrastructure in the United States through government oversight.

Internet rights advocacy and lobbying group the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has an interesting article offering five reasons why the National Security Agency (NSA) shouldn't be trusted to run whatever cybersecurity oversight comes out if the Senate passes the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 and manages to reconcile it with the House's Cyber Intelligence Security Protection Act (CISPA).

Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and the co-sponsors of his Cybersecurity Act of 2012 are not pleased with the conservative lobbying group the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and are firing back at the group for what they call "mischaracterizations" about the latest revisions to the bill. More specifically, Senator Lieberman is upset over a letter that the group sent to U.S. Senators urging them not to support the bill. The group opposes the further regulations the bill would put on U.S.

Senators Frank Lautenberg (NJ), Barbara Boxer (CA), Jack Reed (RI), Bob Menendez (NJ), Kirsten Gillibrand (NY), Schumer (NY) and Dianne Feinstein (CA) submitted an amendment to the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 which would limit real-world gun rights. The language intends to make ownership or transfer of magazines (and other ammunition-feeding devices capable of holding ten or more bullets) illegal.

President Barack Obama yesterday urged members of the U.S. Senate to pass the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 and encouraged representatives of Congress to draft and pass a similar bill quickly, saying:

Update: We erroneously reported that the 1000th episode of Monday Night RAW would be airing live from Las Vegas next week (the show was in Las Vegas this week). The milestone episode of WWE's flagship program will actually be live from St. Lois, Missouri. We apologize for the error and have updated the story to reflect the corrections.

Normally we would ignore what's going on at Twitter (not because we don't care but because the daily machinations of the service have no bearing within these pages), but a change in policy is of particular interest - mainly in how it might relate to current and future cybersecurity bills - like CISPA, PROTECT IT, and the Cybersecurity Act of 2012. Like Google, Twitter has decided to disclose how often the U.S. government asks for information on a user or issues a DMCA takedown via what they call a new "transparency tool."

In an age where acronyms such as SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, CISPA, CSA, and more put fear into the hearts of Internet users all over the globe it's time that someone stand up and clearly define what rights we should have on the Internet. Like the Continental Congress did when America declared Independence way back in 1776, the Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) and other advocacy groups have come up with our own version of a "Declaration" for the Internet age.

According to a post on The Hill privacy groups remain unimpressed with efforts to draft a revised version of the SECURE IT Act. Senate Republicans released a revised version of their cybersecurity bill on Wednesday, but privacy groups shrugged off the changes as minor.

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and a co-sponsor of Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), thinks that President Barack Obama will back down from a threat he made earlier in the year to veto the bill if it crosses his desk. The Administration's problem with the bill was that it gave amnesty to corporations willing to share user data with government agencies like the NSA and did not do enough to safeguard internet user privacy concerns.

But none of those concerns will matter anymore, according to Rogers.

Lawmakers seems to believe that if you put the term "Cyber" together with scary terms like "war," "terror," and "security" that you can get the power you need to pass bills and enable new powers for the government. The same tactics were employed quite unsuccessfully with SOPA and PIPA, bills that used words like "theft," "copyright infringement," "piracy," and "counterfeiting" to fight against supposed international crime. 

The Cybersecurity Act of 2012 (CSA) lead sponsor Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) says that the bill will be dead in the water if it is not voted on before July. The Cybersecurity Act of 2012, which includes some of the language from the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA), could be voted on before that because it has the support of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV). While the Administration support's Lieberman's bill, the President said earlier this year that he would veto CISPA in its current form if it crossed his desk.

Sens. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) are offering a draft cybersecurity bill to fellow senators that they hope will convince them to support the bill. In the new bill Homeland Security would have the power to "pressure" but not force critical infrastructure companies to improve the security of their computer systems.

Tick tock says the clock and Congressman Jim Langevin (D-R.I.), who said today that time is running out on passing the Senate's version of the cybersecurity bill. Perhaps he means that time is running out before the general public figures out just how awful it is...

Speaking at West Point, Langevin admitted that there was still "a gulf in opinions" about the government's role in protecting private computer networks and that the divide has become "an increasingly daunting barrier" to passing reforms.

Update: It would be a disservice to our readers if we failed to mention Fight for the Future's recent calamity with user information. You can read about it here.

Advocacy groups Fight for the Future, Democrats.com, The Liberty Coalition, and the Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA), have banded together to create a new website called Privacy Is Awesome, to fight against CISPA and the Senate version of the bill, SECURE IT Act. The site is designed to teach netizens how to defeat the bills in five easy steps:

Senator Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) said on Monday that the Senate's cybersecurity legislation being pushed by Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) is an overreaction to cyber threats and would undermine the privacy rights of American citizens.

Wyden said that both the House and Senate bills "subordinate all existing privacy rules and constitutional principles to the poorly defined interest of 'cybersecurity.'"

Legendary computer scientist and the man known as "the father of the Internet," Vint Cerf said during the Freedom to Connect conference in Washington on Monday that the International Telecommunications Union will become a "global Internet cop" by using a number of new tools being crafted by lawmakers. Cerf said that the ITU could push mandatory intellectual property laws as a way to strengthen web surveillance.

The Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) has sent out an action alert calling on its members and the general public to take action against the House bill CISPA and its Senate counterpart the Cybersecurity Act of 2012. Both are bad news for anyone that uses the Internet because the laws would allow corporations like Facebook and Google to share your Internet habits with government agencies without fear of being sued by you for doing so.

Earlier this week the Center for Democracy & Technology sent a letter to the Senate expressing its grave concerns over the cybersecurity bill sponsored by Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-CT.) and Susan Collins (R-ME.). The letter was signed by 21 organizations and individuals that see the Senate’s version of CISPA (SECURE IT) as deeply flawed and dangerous to Internet freedom, individual liberty, and privacy.

Sen. Joe Lieberman’s (I- CT.) cybersecurity bill - a counterpart of sorts to the House's Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) - is running into plenty of opposition from Democrats in the Senate who say the bill does not do enough to protect the privacy of citizens. Adding to the fact that most Senate Republicans don't like Lieberman’s bill is that several prominent Democrats don't like it either.

Facebook is beginning to drum up interest among the investor class for its initial public offering, which could raise raise between $9.4 billion and $11.8 billion for the company. But because of its public support for CISPA one high profile investor says that he is not going to touch Facebook's stock: Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. 

In an interview with CNN, Ohanian said that he plans to hold off on any investment in Facebook due to its support of CISPA. He did concede that he understood the “business value of what Facebook is doing.”

Senate Democrats are tweaking their versions of cybersecurity legislation to gain more support from Republicans, according to a report from The Hill. The reason they are doing this, says the publication, is because they lack the 60 votes needed to bring the bill to the floor.