The Senate just voted in secret to approve the controversial CISA bill

A U.S. Senate committee has voted in secret to approve a controversial bill that seeks to encourage businesses to share information about cyberthreats with each other and with government agencies. The Senate Intelligence Committee, meeting behind closed doors, voted 14-1 late Thursday to approve the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act [CISA], even though Senator Ron Wyden, who cast the lone vote against the legislation, said it doesn’t adequately protect privacy. “If information-sharing legislation does not include adequate privacy protections, then that’s not a cybersecurity bill—it’s a surveillance bill by another name,” Wyden said in a statement. The bill would have a “limited impact” on U.S. cybersecurity, he added. The committee released a discussion draft of the bill last month, but did not publicly release an updated text of CISA before voting to send it to the Senate floor. The committee will release the text of the bill after amendments are added to it, it said in a news release.