The lede: Following a vote that failed 51-47, the Cybersecurity Act of 2012 will not be taken up for discussion and amendment in the upper chamber of the U.S. Congress.
According to Senator Reid, as quoted by reporter Brendan Sasso: “Cybersecurity is dead for this Congress.” TNW has been arguing that this was the case for some months, but flickers of hope continued to spring up, leading to some last minute jockeying on the issue.
As reported in The Hill’s Floor Action blog, Senator Lieberman said the following today before the vote: “If we fail to pass legislation [the President] will issue an executive order that will do as much as it has authority to do to prevent a cybersecurity attack.”
That didn’t help. It still failed.
On a happier note, I don’t have to eat my mousepad: “If there is any real progress on cybersecurity that is not led by the President before the end of the year, I’ll eat my mousepad.”
If you were the sort of person who found CISPA to be troubling, the upside to all of this is that that bill is dead as well; it only passed the House, and as the Senate can’t seem to pass the peas, let alone a bill, it will remain a non-law for the forseeable future.
So, where to now? It’s all up to the President now, assuming that he still wants the issue for his own. We’ve already dissected the draft executive order on cybersecurity, and parsed the whining that it has engendered.
Now it’s a waiting game: Will President Obama act?
Top Image Credit: Mike Sheridan
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