Top Dem: McConnell ‘playing games’ on cyber legislation

Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) thinks Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) is making the same mistake on cybersecurity that he did only weeks ago on surveillance, when the Senate leader tried and failed to pass a “clean” reauthorization of the Patriot Act over the objections of civil liberties-minded senators.

The Kentucky Republican is trying to attach a stalled cyber bill — meant to boost the public-private exchange of data on hackers — to the defense authorization measure being debated this week.

{mosads}The GOP is arguing it’s imperative to pass a cyber bill in the wake of the massive data breach that left 4 million federal workers’ information exposed.

But the move has drawn the ire of Democrats who want to offer privacy-enhancing amendments to the bill, known as the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA). Some on the left and far right worry that CISA could shuttle more data to the National Security Agency’s surveillance programs.

To Leahy, it’s reminiscent of McConnell’s attempts to go against NSA critics when the Senate was considering whether to reform and reauthorize the Patriot Act.

“We can have a good cyber bill, we need a good cyber bill,” Leahy told The Hill. “But I hope everybody found out when they tried to play games with the Patriot Act extension, we have the worst possible world.”

The Senate leader tried to extend the Patriot Act without any alterations; he was blocked on every effort to re-up the surveillance bill for even one day.

In the end, McConnell had to acquiesce and allow a vote on the preferred reform bill, the USA Freedom Act. The measure passed, but not before the Patriot Act expired, leaving the government without numerous surveillance capabilities for several days.   

“We finally passed the bill, a good bill, but everything had expired,” Leahy said. “Now there’s lawsuits all over the place.”

The privacy-minded Democrat said he hopes Republican leaders have learned a lesson from the incident.

“Why not just do things the way it should be?” Leahy asked. “Bring up the bill, vote up or down and send it on its way. I think this playing games with national security is a bad mistake.”