Obama signs divisive cyberthreat bill amid privacy fears

President Obama publicly signed the executive order driving through new cyber security legislation today, using an appearance at Stanford to discuss the controversial balance of privacy and protection. The bill – already a topic of fierce debate in Congress, which had continually refused to pass it – demands greater information sharing between government and private industry, "sharing appropriate information" as relevant to ensure vital infrastructure isn't compromised by hackers or malicious governments. However, exactly what counts as "appropriate", and what impact that has on individual privacy, remains to be seen.

Obama announced the summit on cyber security and consumer protection a month ago, billing it as "a White House summit where we're not going to do it at the White House." Intended to pull together participants not only from government but law enforcement, the tech firms, privacy advocates, and legal experts, the goal was "to make sure that we work through these issues in a public, transparent fashion," the president insisted.

Not every tech company has been so enthused, however. Apple CEO Tim Cook attended the event, but both Yahoo and Google sent representatives but not chief executives, and there's been far from a clean sweep of support from a wary technology segment.

That caution is down to uncertainty over what, exactly, the individual firms might be expected to share, and who will make the final decision on those limits.

"It's one of the great paradoxes of our time that the very technology that can be used to do great good can also be used to imperil us and do great harm," Obama said during his speech.

Still, while the order does contain sections on civil liberties and how personal internet use will be protected, there are still those who aren't keen on such transparency.

"We have to be sure we're protecting the privacy of the American people," Obama insisted, though as with the details on private sector sharing, the exact limits on what internet users themselves might have disclosed about their online activities are still works-in-progress.

Meanwhile, earlier proposals called for a notification requirement so that private companies would have to notify users of cases of data loss within a set period.

"If we're going to be connected, then we need to be protected," the president said at the time. "As Americans, we shouldn't have to forfeit our basic privacy when we go online to do our business."

SOURCE White House