Congress snuck a surveillance bill into the federal budget

After more than a year of stalemate, Congress has used an unconventional procedural measure to bring a controversial cybersurveillance bill to the floor. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-WI) announced a 2,000-page omnibus budget bill, a last-minute compromise necessary to prevent a government shutdown. But while the bulk of the bill concerns taxes and spending, it contains a surprise 1,729 pages in: the full text of the controversial Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act of 2015 (CISA), which passed the Senate in October.

CISA has been widely criticized since it was first introduced to congress in 2014, with Sen Ron Wyden (D-OR) calling it "a surveillance bill by another name." The bill would make it easier for private sector companies to share user information with the government and other companies, removing privacy and liability protections in the name of better cybersecurity. But critics like Sen Wyden say removing those protections would turn Internet backbone companies into de facto surveillance organs, with no incentive to protect users' privacy.