Apple has issued a joint statement with Dropbox condemning the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act currently under consideration by the U.S. Senate, The Washington Post reports. Sen.
Diane Feinstein, one of the bill’s co-sponsors, argues that the bill allows companies to share information about “cyber threats” with the government, but doesn’t provide for the collection of personal data. “Things like Social Security numbers, addresses, passwords and credit information would be unrelated to a cyber threat and would, except in very exceptional circumstances, be removed” before data on a threat was sent to authorities, she said.
But Apple, Dropbox and a long list of other tech companies contend that the bill is vague, doesn’t do enough to guard user privacy and needs many more protections in place before winning their support. “The trust of our customers means everything to us and we don’t believe security should come at the expense of their privacy,” Apple said in the statement.
Sen. Ron Wyden said the number of tech companies coming out against the bill proves that it still lacks adequate privacy safeguards. “Sharing information about cybersecurity threats is a worthy goal,” Wyden said.
