In an effort to enhance our nation’s defenses against electronic terrorism while also upholding invididual rights to privacy on the Internet, U.S. Rep. Blaine Luetkemeyer (MO-9) today voted with a large bipartisan majority in favor of the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act of 2011 (CISPA) which would help secure the nation’s critical infrastructure by protecting national security and reducing the incidence of cybersecurity breaches.

The legislation, H.R.3523 which passed 248-168, would grant the authority to the government to safely share classified cybersecurity intelligence information with the private sector and the private sector to voluntarily share cybersecurity information with other private entities and the federal government.  In order to protect Americans’ Fourth Amendment rights, the legislation includes numerous safeguards.  It 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 Freedom of Information Act, treats the information as proprietary and prohibits the data’s use in regulatory proceedings. As reported by CNN Money, U.S. companies will spend $130 billion as a result of data breaches among various corporations. That total number in spending has tripled since 2006. Additionally, the legislation encourages the private sector to anonymize or minimize the information it shares with others, especially removing any personally identifiable information.

“This critical legislation ensures the privacy protections guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution and prevents the inappropriate disclosure of personal information to the public. It is important to note that this legislation does not allow the federal government to use any of the voluntarily obtained data for reasons or measures other than cybersecurity purposes or protection of national security,” Luetkemeyer said. “This legislation’s main focus is to put into place a system of information sharing which would allow American businesses and the federal government to better protect stored personal information as well as safeguard strategic military plans, identifiable information for every taxpaying American, results from years of expensive research and information for our critical infrastructure, including our roads, nuclear facilities, energy reserves, hospitals, military bases, among other things. Without cybersecurity reform, all of this information is vulnerable to hackers, terrorists and foreign nations like China.”

The CISPA legislation, which heads next to the Senate for consideration, differs drastically from H.R.3261, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which is concerned with intellectual property rights and copyright infringement. 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.