Senate Asks Facebook, Google To Send User Information Without A Warrant

A new bill making its way through the Senate would allow the federal government to collect user information from companies like Google and Facebook…without a warrant. The bill, called the Cyber Information Sharing Act (CISA) of 2015, "encourages" private companies to share user information with the federal government with minimal oversight.

In a closed-door meeting on Thursday, March 12, the Senate Intelligence Committee approved the bill and is now sending it on for a vote. Reading through the latest publicly available draft of the bill, CISA’s provisions seem unusually broad and designed to allow future invasions of privacy. Although the bill says its purpose is to prevent hacker attacks, it encourages the sharing of all sorts of user information with wide swaths of the federal government. The bill's language is extremely vague, and could include everything from user account information to IP address login history to geolocation and even what type of phone a customer uses. As written, the government also has a very ambiguous definition of what type of "cyber attack" could compel a private company to send information on to entities like the Pentagon and the Attorney General’s office.