The Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2014 passed the Senate Intelligence Committee in a 12 to 3 vote yesterday, clearing the way for the successor to CISPA to be put to a vote in the full Senate at some point this year.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) said that time is running out for the Senate to pass its cybersecurity bill. He warned his fellow lawmakers in the chamber that the August recess is fast approaching and that the country needs a law in place as soon as possible.

“If we don’t have something moving by August, I think it gets lost in the haze, and it will be a very long time until we actually get a bill passed that will actually have an impact,” he said at a cybersecurity forum at George Washington University.

East Bay Express has an interesting article on a California Congressional race where votes for the National Security Agency's budget and the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) are taking center stage. Eric Swalwell (pictured, left), the current U.S. Representative of California's 15th District (D), is taking heat from his opponent Democratic State Senate Majority Leader Ellen Corbett.

While it's never good to revel in someone's departure from public service, privacy and internet reform advocates probably can't help to feel some satisfaction in hearing that one of its biggest adversaries in Congress will not seek reelection.

The chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee has attached his cybersecurity bill (S.1353) as an amendment to next year’s National Defense Authorization Act. If the amendment manages to survive the approval process Sen. Rockefeller’s Cybersecurity Act of 2013 may finally become law. S.1353, was unanimously approved by the Commerce Committee in July but has been stalled since then.

House Intelligence chairman Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) reiterated this week that he is frustrated with how the Edward Snowden leaks about the NSA's domestic spying programs on U.S. citizens has stalled the progress of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act in the Senate. Rogers spoke at a panel discussion hosted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. yesterday.

The battle over the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) is far from over and lawmakers and leaders in the government's various security agencies are pushing hard to get legislation in the Senate passed. Earlier this year the House of Representatives passed CISPA with the hopes of the Senate putting together a bill of its own. At the time the Senate let that hot potato cool by saying that it had no plans to pursue such legislation.

Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss (Ga.), the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said today that the Senate is "very close" to introducing legislation that would encourage the private sector to share information with federal agencies. A counterpart to the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) that passed the House in April of this year, the as-of-yet unnamed bill would also provide blanket immunity to corporations that share data so they wouldn't have to worry about getting sued by customers.

According to a report on NextGov, the person replacing outgoing Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano will likely be someone who has supported National Security Agency digital surveillance programs or legislation such as the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA). Secretary Napolitano announced earlier this month that she would be leaving the DHS in September to lead the University of California.

The Senate's Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee released a draft bill today that attempts to tackle the thorny issue of cybersecurity. The draft bill is backed by Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) and ranking Republican member John Thune (R-S.D.). Its creators claim that the draft is an attempt to create a compromise on the issue of cybersecurity after repeated (and failed) attempts to pass legislation through the Senate last term.

While lawmakers would like to get back to pushing the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) and other cyber security proposals, it looks like Edward Snowden's revelations about the NSA's spying has put the brakes on any legislation moving forward, according to Verge.

Motherboard (part of VICE - which you may know better from their new weekly news show on HBO) has an interesting interview with two hackers - Dragon and PhäntömZ - who run a stresser/booter company called Agony (a stresser/booter is a software or service that allows a user to flood a network). In the Interview the publication talks to the duo about Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, botnets, shells, black hat and white hat hackers, Anonymous, CISPA, and more.

Liberal-flavored site Burnt Orange Report sheds some light on a Texas bill sponsored by both Democrats and Republicans in the House that gives law enforcement in the state broad powers to look at private Internet data without much justification.

The bill was sponsored by Texas Republican Reps. John Frullo, Allen Fletcher, and John Carona; and Democratic Rep. Senfronia Thompson. House Bill 2268 is described as follows:

In April the House of Representatives managed to push the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) through the chamber, but shortly thereafter it stalled in the Senate. Leaders there said they weren't planning on taking the issue up, instead planning to focus on a number of separate bills to address issues related to cybersecurity concerns by the government and corporations.

Well, I guess we'll file this one under "better late than never." The White House has finally responded to a Petition signed by over 100,000 people asking the Administration to oppose the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act. While the bill easily passed the House, the Senate has decided that it will not create a counterpart to the bill in this year's session.

As Atlantic Wire points out in this article, and which we anticipated to be the case in this story earlier in the week CISPA is all but dead in the Senate as lawmakers in the upper House tackle issues they deem more important this year.

As pointed out by RT, even while the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) may have passed by a 288 to 127 margin in the House (and garnered more votes from Democrats this time around than it did in 2012 when it passed), the bill faces an unknown future in the Senate where other issues like Internet taxes, immigration and more are the causes getting priority right now..

Earlier this week the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) issued a statement on CISPA (which we admittedly missed) coming out strongly against the cybersecurity bill passed in the House yesterday afternoon.

As expected the House of Representatives has passed the controversial Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) by a vote of 288 to 127. Surprisingly, almost half of House Democrats supported the 196 Republicans in supporting the measure, despite President Barack Obama promising to veto the bill in its current state (lacking privacy protection and giving corporations blanket immunity from litigation).

Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI 3rd District) has increased his public critique of Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act in the last few days after an amendment that would have added more privacy protections to the bill were rejected in the House Rules Committee this week.

In an editorial penned for The Hill to convince members of congress to join him, Rep. Mike Pompeo (R-Kansas) says that the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) bill is a good thing. He extols the virtues of its commitment to the protection of Constitutional civil liberties and privacy because in Kansas protecting individual rights is in its citizens' "DNA."

While CISPA is likely to come up for a vote as soon as this afternoon or tomorrow, the White House has come out against it in a statement and has promised to veto it if it crosses President Barack Obama's desk in its current state.

Thirty-four civil liberties groups have signed onto a letter urging lawmakers in the House of Representatives to vote against the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) when it comes up for a vote on the floor either today or tomorrow. The letter lays out the collective groups' continued opposition to the bill after a secret markup hearing last week was held and amendments put forward that would have added privacy protections for Americans were soundly rejected by hearing members.

Representatives Anna G. Eshoo (CA), Rush Holt (NJ), Janice Schakowsky (IL) and Adam B. Schiff (CA) have written a "Dear Colleague" letter coming out strongly against the current version of CISPA, saying that the bill "has major shortcomings and would undermine the interests of citizens and their privacy."

The American Civil Liberties Union is calling its recent efforts to petition President Barack Obama to veto CISPA a smashing success, with 49,513 signatures so far. The civil liberties group also took out a full page ad on popular political website (found here) Politico yesterday urging members of Congress to oppose the controversial cybersecurity bill.

According to The Hill, IBM - as a strong supporter of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) - will send over 100 executives to Washington D.C. to hold nearly 300 meetings with lawmakers over a two-day period.

"We’re going to put our shoe leather where our mouth is," Chris Padilla, vice president of governmental affairs at IBM, told The Hill.

While (most, not all) Republicans seems to largely embrace and support the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISP) sponsored by congressman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.), Politico provides a ray of hope for those who oppose what rights groups are calling a slick "government surveillance" bill.

While Rep. Mike Roger rushes CISPA through a markup committee hearing this week, one Rep. is getting her own cybersecurity bill ready for a floor vote. While Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) called on the SEC to issue formal guidance on corporate disclosures related to cyber attacks, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) re-introduced the SECURE IT Act. Her bill is an alternative to the Senate's Cyber-Security Act of 2012 (S. 2105).

In a new video promoting opposition to CISPA, Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian calls Google to talk about whether the search giant supports the CISPA legislation. Ultimately he doesn't get to talk to the CEO of that company. His calls to the CEOs of Twitter and Facebook bring similar results.

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act (CISPA) has made it out of its markup hearing in the House by a vote of 18-2. That means that the bill could be voted on by the full House on the floor as soon as next week. Worst still members of the committee overwhelmingly voted down an amendment that would have added some privacy provisions into the bill.